


When the Levee Breaks

by FunnyWings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Deanna's POV, F/F, F/M, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Fem!Cas, Happy Ending, Men of Letters, Sam's POV, fem!dean, fem!destiel, girl!Cas, girl!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 11:46:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 39,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12652926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunnyWings/pseuds/FunnyWings
Summary: The Men of Letters find Deanna Winchester after she's been missing for five years. They send Sam in to interrogate her about her connection to Cas, a dangerous creature they can't identify. When Deanna starts talking, secrets will out and Sam finds that he isn't prepared to hear the worst of it.





	1. Chapter 1

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” said Mary to Sam. He was staring through the one sided mirror to where Deanna was sitting, tapping her fingers on the table. Outwardly she appeared bored, but Sam could see the slight clench in her jaw that gave away underlying anger. Her hair was shorter than the last time he’d seen it, shorn down to shoulder length now. She was dressed differently too, embracing the hunter plaid over the blazer and button up she’d favored as a woman of letters. Her face seemed different too, harder than it had been.

“He’s our best shot at figuring out what the hell she’s been running with,” John argued. Mary glared at him until he relented, which was a rare dynamic for them. Mostly Mary did just about anything John said. “But if you really don’t think you can-“

“I already said I’d do it,” said Sam quietly. He kept staring at Deanna, taking in the image of his sister. “How long has it been?”

“Five years,” Mary said after a moment. “Charlie isn’t with her.”

Sam had noticed that too. It worried him vaguely, because that meant either something had happened to his sister’s best friend or that Deanna had been so affected by what had happened to her that she had left Charlie’s side. He wasn’t sure which was worse. The two had decided they would rather be hunters than scholars, a decision Sam had not been made aware of until two years after it had happened. He had already cut ties with his entire family by that time so he could conduct the failed experiment of living a normal life. When he came crawling back to Lebanon, Kansas, it had been to discover that his sister had left six months prior. Two years later and they still hadn’t found her. Until now, of course.

“Do we have any idea what we’re dealing with?” Sam asked. John shook his head.

“Deanna hasn’t spoken since we brought her in and the prisoner is… difficult,” he said. “It said if we wanted answers, we should consider building it a shrine and starting a regular regimen of daily worship and it might consider it.”

Sam almost let out a laugh despite the seriousness of the situation. That sounded like something his sister would say, just to be obnoxious. He had seen the prisoner too. She had taken the appearance of a woman with long dark hair and blue eyes, and if Sam was being honest he could see the appeal in worship. She was otherworldly in an ancient way, and Sam had been surprised the Men of Letters hadn’t tried to kill her yet. The American branch preferred studying monsters and releasing anyone who wasn’t dangerous, unlike other factions of their organization who were more indiscriminate when it came to who should be killed, but it was clear at a glance that the prisoner was lethal.

“Aren’t you concerned that she’ll hurt someone?” Sam asked.

“She’s tied to Deanna. We don’t know what killing her would do,” said John, catching on to what Sam was really saying with ease. “They tried removing the binding spell. Hell, they tried cutting it out of her skin, and it just grew back, marks and all.”

Deanna had turned to look toward the mirror, and Sam froze under her gaze. She lifted up a hand with a middle finger raised toward the window and he let out a breath of relief. She didn’t know he was there, just suspected someone she could piss off might see her.

“I’m going to talk to her,” Sam said, walking around and pushing open the door so he could walk into the interrogation room. His parents watched him go, and he could see his mom open her mouth to say something before she shook her head. Sam lost sight of them as he close the door behind him. He didn’t turn around right away, taking a moment to gather himself.

“You know, I might be more cooperative if someone grabs me a burger,” said Deanna nonchalantly. Sam turned around. “I mean, there’s at least a chance that-“

Deanna cut herself off. Sam sat down across from her. He took out a silver knife and showed it to her then pressed the tip to the back of his forearm only just nicking it. He cleaned off the drop of blood that pooled on his skin with a splash of holy water and then repeated an Arabic spell that would free a body of any possessing forces.

“I already knew it was you,” Deanna said after a second. “God, Sammy, tell me they didn’t pull you away from school for this crap.”

“They didn’t,” said Sam. “I, uh, I came back.”

“You came back?” Deanna said flatly. Sam blinked a moment at the vehemence in her voice. Going to college had been respected by his family, especially since it gave him the opportunity to study linguistics and mythology so he could be a better hunter under his mother’s tutelage. It had been an agreement set up a long time ago that Deanna and Sam would learn from both of their parents and Deanna would join the Men of Letters as a legacy and Sam would start to work with the Campbells, Mary’s side of the family, as a hunter.

Sam had railed against this from a young age, complaining every time it was brought up. He heard over and over again from the two other kids his age about how hunters were dirty and uncivilized and dumb, and his eight year old self had been very certain that he was not dumb. He hadn’t thought it fair that Deanna was the one who got to be a legacy, and he had made it no secret while he was growing up, but every time he said it wasn’t what he wanted, his mother or his father or Deanna herself would shut him down. So when he had left for college, he’d secretly changed his major so that he was prelaw. When he got into law school, he’d changed his number and just never came home. No one came looking for him.

“Two years ago,” said Sam. Deanna looked away from him, her fingers back to tapping on the table. “We didn’t know where you went.”

“I was around,” said Deanna with a shrug. “Mom knew where to find me if she needed to. Made sure she wouldn’t tell Dad.”

Sam frowned. Mom told Dad everything.

“How did you do that?” he asked after a second. Deanna laughed, but it didn’t sound quite right. She looked up at Sam and her frown deepened and her laughing cut off.

“You know it’s funny, it’s been so long since I worried about keeping secrets from you, I don’t even remember what you know and you don’t know anymore,” she said. “That’s going to make this a barrel of laughs. Let’s cut to the chase, kid, they sent you in because they want answers. I’ll answer some questions and when this is over, Cas and I go free. That sound good?”

“You know I can’t promise that,” Sam pointed out. Deanna waited, letting minutes tick by without saying anything. At last Sam stood up and left the room to go and discuss Deanna’s deal with the elder Men of Letters.

***

Kevin was the first person the prisoner talked to in good faith. He had been practicing his cello in his room, which was the closest to the dungeon, and afterwards when he had come out, she had called to him and asked him something or other about music theory. They had had a brief chat about it, with the prisoner eventually mentioning lyres and somehow the conversation had derailed until the prisoner was insisting that Nero had in fact fiddled as Rome fell, and that the anachronistic instrument had been given to him by an old friend of hers.

He hadn’t thought to report it until two days later when he realized it might be important. The elders had torn him a new one for this, and Kevin had shown he was properly ashamed. Sam had listened to the entire story with interest.

His talks with Deanna hadn’t been going well. She talked around every question he asked her, and every day her only request in exchange for more straightforward answers was always to be let go along with the prisoner. John had begun to question whether Sam was the man for the job, a sentiment Mary repeated when prompted.

The decision to speak with the prisoner was made impulsively, and only because Kevin seemed to have survived being close enough to have been killed. Sam made his way down to the dungeon late at night, nodding at Garth who was currently on watch. He knew that Garth would forget he had been here if asked, and that meant he didn’t have to report his findings to the elders. He felt a little guilty about that, but anything to free his sister from the spell she was under would be a good thing.

The prisoner was sitting cross legged in the center of her cell, wearing the weight of her chains with ease. Her eyes were closed, and her brow furrowed. Sam was five feet from her before she opened her eyes to acknowledge him. She frowned after a moment, her head tilting slightly.

“I know you,” she said. “Sam Winchester. Yes, I know you.”

Sam hesitated, but decided to sit across from the prisoner. She looked at him calmly and he looked back, deciding he wouldn’t be the first person to look away.

“It’s Cas, correct?” asked Sam.

“That’s as close as we could get,” said the prisoner. “The rest is locked away. Deanna couldn’t walk back any farther in my memories looking for it. Is she alright? Is she eating enough? She won’t tell me how they’re treating her.”

That got Sam’s attention.

“You can talk to her?” he said slowly.

“It doesn’t go both ways, and the warding makes it difficult,” Cas qualified. “She mentioned you were here. She said not to trust you.”

That hurt. Sam looked away, wondering just where everything had gone so wrong. Part of this distance between himself and his sister was his fault and he knew that, but the thought that Deanna didn’t trust him anymore was a painful one to contemplate.

“She thinks you’ll hurt me,” Cas continued. “Maybe you will, but that’s to be seen. I want you to like me.”

“Why?” asked Sam, a little surprised by the abrupt statement. He didn’t really see how his opinion of her would matter. Cas shrugged gracefully.

“Isn’t it universal to seek an in law’s approval?” she asked as though she were merely musing on the subject. “Sitcoms seem to think so.”

Sam froze for a moment, then turned around without another word and practically ran to the interrogation room.

“You married her?” Sam said after storming through the door. Deanna started, obviously having been trying to sleep in the small bed that had been provided for her in the interrogation room. Everything they said would be recorded, but Sam didn’t care about that right now.

“I mean… not legally. It’s just easier to say than ‘in a relationship and also coincidentally bound together for life’. Not that I haven’t petitioned Facebook to add that option, but they keep insisting ‘It’s complicated’ covers it,” said Deanna. “What did you guys think this was?”

Deanna made a gesture towards her left shoulder where a complicated design of intersecting sigils wrapped around her arm. Sam couldn’t see it under the shirt she was wearing, but he knew it was there.

“She’s not human.”

“Wow, thank you for that shocking new information. I never would have guessed,” said Deanna with a roll of her eyes. “Garth and Bess aren’t human. Their kids aren’t. If George or Rosie grow up and marry a human are you gonna lock one of them up too?”

“That isn’t the same thing,” said Sam. “Werewolves can’t control people. She’s been inside your head, Deanna.”

“That’s… not really how it works,” said Deanna.

“Then how does it work?”

Deanna’s eyes strayed to where she knew the recording device must be. Sam sighed, yanked up the chair from where it sat by the table and smashed the machine put there to record everything Deanna might say. He’d get in trouble for that later, but right now he just couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Tell me everything,” said Sam. Deanna sat herself down carefully at the edge of her bed and considered Sam with a furrowed brow.

“Were you always this angry?” she asked him after a second. “Five years, man. It’s a long time.”

“Yeah. A lot can change about a person,” said Sam. “One thing I remember is you used to think we were too liberal with who we let live. You could barely look at Garth after he got turned, and now I’m supposed to accept that you’ve settled down with… whatever Cas is.”

“Yeah, we don’t know that either,” Deanna said with a slight grimace. “The last thing she really remembers was when she did a stint as Artemis for a while, but before that’s pretty hazy. Cas worries about it like crazy.”

“A stint as Artemis?” Sam asked incredulously.

“For a couple hundred years,” Deanna confirmed. “The real Artemis did something to piss someone off, and got exiled for a while. It happens. Cas took on the title to answer prayers and smooth things over until the other gods got over it. She got kicked out after she saved some fourteen year old kid who nearly got mauled to death by a lion, which Hera set up because the kid was one of Zeus’ many children born out of wedlock. Hera kicked up a fuss and got Cas thrown out. After that the real Artemis was put back in place and Cas did… other stuff.”

Sam did his best to swallow this information.

“You married a god?”

“She likes to think so,” said Deanna, rolling her eyes. “She’s not that impressive, don’t let her convince you she is.”

“Artemis is goddess of the hunt, you didn’t think that was a little on the nose?” Sam muttered next, making Deanna smile at him.

“I knew your dickish sense of humor was still there somewhere,” said Deanna. “And Cas isn’t Artemis, she just carried the title for a while. Like I said, we don’t know what she is. But I do know who she is and who she is is a pretty damn awesome friend, okay?”

Sam took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then let it out. He looked at Deanna and took the chair he’d used to smash the recording device and placed it so he could sit and face Deanna.

“Start from the beginning.”


	2. Chapter 2

Deanna wasn’t sure what Sam meant by beginning, but she figured that when she left the Men of Letter was as good a place as any to start. It wasn’t a simple story, but then again none of this was and she wanted to share her life with her brother. She really did. But it was still obvious she would have to be careful about how she told it.

“Did I ever tell you I always wanted to be a hunter?” she asked first. Sam blinked at her in surprise. “You have no idea how jealous I was of you. Hearing all of uncle Bobby’s crazy stories and the ones I could wheedle out of Mom made it all sound like a huge adventure. Like being a pirate, or a gunslinger.”

“Huh,” Sam said quietly. Deanna shrugged and pulled up her legs so she could hug them to her chest and rest her chin on her knees. She waited a second to see if Sam had anything more to say than that, knowing how badly he had wanted her destiny instead of his own. Silently she begged him to ask her why she’d never mentioned it, but he seemed to accept it quickly and was now waiting for the next part of the story. Deanna sighed and continued.

“Charlie wasn’t hard to talk into it. She always did love fantasy books, and there was no way she was going to go her whole life without cutting someone to bits with a sword,” said Deanna. “It just wouldn’t be right.”

“Where is Charlie?”

“That is a very long story,” said Deanna. “Tell you another time. Let’s just say she can tap her heels three times and come home any time she likes, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen. I was only hunting with Charlie for a couple of months before she got sucked up in, uh, other things. I figured I’d done enough to hack it on my own by that point.”

“You were hunting alone?” Sam asked in alarm.

“I was twenty nine and stupid,” said Deanna. “I knew to call in backup for things like vamp’s nests or if I was going to be outnumbered more than three to one, but I figured I could handle pretty much anything less than that. So I rolled into a town where weird miracles kept happening, figuring I would check it out and if it wasn’t malicious move on. Got snatched my first night in the motel.”

“They made you as a hunter?”

“No, they made me as an easy target,” said Deanna, voice going flinty. “I was alone, female, and looked like a run away. Good chance no one was going to miss me. Didn’t even get snatched by a monster, Sammy, these were fucking people. The beer in the minibar was drugged, and by the time I figured out why it tasted funny I was too far gone to do anything about it. Next thing I knew I was tied up on Cas’ dumb rock being chanted over by the local cult she started by accident.”

“Cas started a cult?”

“By accident,” said Deanna with a sigh. “A friend of hers said she was being ungrateful for the gift he’d given her, so he used molten rock to encase her in and then enchanted it so she couldn’t escape and would be forced to listen to the useless whining of ingrates for however long it took him to get bored.”

“Nice friend.”

“I keep telling her she needs to get better ones,” said Deanna. “That happened back in the eighteen hundreds and she’d been answering prayers ever since in this tiny town in Missouri. People knew if they needed sanctuary and they were worthy they could ask for salvation from her. More than a few people escaped death by praying to her rock.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” said Sam hesitantly. Deanna sighed.

“It wasn’t, until a witch caught sight of it in the eighties,” said Deanna. “And not the good kind. He had a thing for one of the local girls, and she pretty much told him she would never ever be interested. He tried making her insides melt and was furious when Cas saved her. So he went out to find the mysterious rock everyone kept talking about and added a few sigils so he could compel Cas to answer his prayers and his alone, and he bound the spell with the blood of the local girl Cas had tried to save. Then he set up a business where anyone who paid him enough would have their name added to the rock, and whatever these people prayed for, Cas had to do. Twenty seven years later, and the spell needed a touch up.”

“A touch up?”

“That would be where I came in. Along with a couple of poor woodland creatures gone too soon,” said Deanna. “Have I mentioned I hate witches? The bad ones at least. I know that’s a shitty thing to say, but… I hate witches.”

Sam cracked a smile at Deanna’s little shudder of disgust. She smiled back at him, and for a second it felt like it used to when they were younger and just talking in whatever strange room in the bunker they’d wandered into. No one had ever been able to find them when they didn’t want to be found, and Deanna secretly had always thought the bunker did this on purpose. It was one of two places she considered home, and both places felt like living things to her in a way that was too literal for her not to believe it, even if she would never say it out loud.

Even in the interrogation room there was something comforting about being back here. Like the walls were happy to see her again. Cas probably hadn’t really gotten why Deanna would be feeling any warmth about their current situation, but she would as soon as Deanna could see her again. God, please let that be soon, Deanna thought to herself. She prayed to Cas silently for a moment, a quiet ‘I miss you’ floating through the air down to the dungeon.

“So there I am, tied to a rock and trying to think my way out of the situation, when something starts poking at my head. Cas was getting closer and closer to actually having control over herself again, but that wasn’t going to do her much good if they refreshed the spell. They’d compelled her never to hurt them, so the worst she could do at that point was give them a nasty headache. But she told me if I let her in, of my own will and freely given consent, she could shift the original binding spell on the rock to me without transferring any of the additions the witch made. Shoved about an hour’s worth of explanation into my head in a few seconds, so I kinda figured she was, y’know, not a ghost or anything. Too powerful for that.”

“And you agreed to ‘let her in’?”

“A friggin’ witch with a big knife was about to make me a ritual sacrifice. So yeah, I took my chances and told her have at it,” said Deanna. “God you should have seen the look on that guy’s face after he stabbed me. Cas and I broke the ropes, took out the knife and burned his brains out of his skull. It was badass.”

Sam stared at her like she was insane. Deanna shrugged, looking off to the side.

“Maybe you had to be there,” she muttered.

“And after that…” Sam said, trailing off. The question he was asking was clear as day. After all, cult members might be pretty far down on the scale of right and wrong, but they were still human, and killing humans wasn’t a hunter’s or a Man of Letters’ job. At least not in this country it wasn’t.

“That, uh, took some convincing,” said Deanna after a second, looking down now. Sometimes she wished she’d let Cas use her body to cut every one of them down. The things they’d done, the things they’d made Cas do weren’t forgivable. Sure, there was the odd case of curing the sick or the wounded or harmless stuff like a better grade on a test for their kids, but some of the things people asked for were downright sickening and Cas had had no choice but to comply. She deserved a little revenge. “But Cas let them live. If you can call what they’re doing living.”

Sam swallowed. Deanna tried to read the expression on his face.

“What did she do?”

“Erased everything,” Deanna said. “The way she put it, she was giving them a second chance to be good people. Better people. Not sure what the town said about the mass amnesia. We didn’t really stick around to find out.”

Sam didn’t say anything for a while. Deanna could feel her fingers start tapping against her leg and tried to quell her nervous habit. She wished she could sneak her way out for a cigarette. Cas complained endlessly about it, but Deanna knew for a fact that her lungs weren’t going to go kaput as long as Cas had something to say about it, so Deanna took advantage of her perpetual clean bill of health to indulge in a few unhealthy activities. So sue her.

“So she could be messing with your head and you wouldn't even know,” Sam said. Deanna sighed. That was what she got for forgetting how careful she needed to be with this. She knew her father would never see this as anything but coercion, because he couldn’t, and John Winchester could be a convincing son of a bitch when he thought he was doing the right thing. Worse than that, Sam would feel compelled to believe him, because he always did when their dad just sounded so reasonable and right. It had hurt like hell when Sam had cut them all out, but Deanna couldn’t entirely blame him for it. She knew just how hard it was to make her way out from under John Winchester’s thumb. He was well practiced at keeping people where he wanted them. “And you’re not telling me everything.”

Deanna sighed.

“What do you wanna know?” she asked. “That I was scared of Cas when I met her? Of course I was. That I didn’t trust her? Not at first, no. You think I wasn’t worried that once she’d started taking my body for a spin, she wasn’t gonna leave?”

That if anything seemed to make Sam’s suspicions worse.

“Where’d she get the body she’s wearing now?” he asked, referring to Cas.

“We broke open the rock and got her old one. She went back, but she was still tied to me, and we figured that we could solve that problem later,” said Deanna with a shrug. “No one else is in that body, trust me. It ain’t like I wouldn’t know anyway. Cas and I don’t have a ton of boundaries when there isn’t a shit ton of warding in the way. It would have come up sooner or later.”

It had in fact come up, not that Sam needed to know that. Cas had explained that her current body was the gift she was supposed to be grateful for, and that her friend had made it for her after she had been removed from her position as Artemis and been cursed by Hera to walk the Earth instead of the heavens of her choice. The thing was, Deanna had had her suspicions—she’d always kept a step away from these thoughts whenever Cas was listening—about what exactly Cas was, and she didn’t want her brother figuring it out. Not before he knew just how much Cas meant to Deanna.

“You keep talking about her like she’s just some girl you met. She’s not,” said Sam carefully. “You do understand why I have to be careful with this? Maybe everything is the way you say it is, but if it’s not, you would want me to save you.”

“You sure about that?” asked Deanna. “Because the Deanna you knew was pretty fucking miserable. I don’t know if you noticed. Maybe I’m just grateful that I’m happy now, and don’t really care how it happened.”

Deanna could see her words had hit their target, and she regretted saying them. Of course Sam hadn’t noticed. That had been the whole damn point of working so hard to make sure he didn’t. That wasn’t his fault and she knew that, but sometimes it was hard reminding herself when he kept acting like he knew her. Maybe once upon a time he did, but not now.

“I’m done with you for today,” said Sam angrily. He stood up and shoved the chair away from him before leaving Deanna alone, locked in the interrogation room. It occurred to her that she could have tried to follow him out, and Sam likely wouldn’t have tried too hard to stop her. Then again, she wanted at least two or three people on her side before she attempted an escape plan. The walls might be happy to see her, but that doesn’t mean they could stop the Men of Letters from handcuffing her to the interrogation table if they ever figured out just how dangerous she was now. She was gonna have one shot to get out, and after that like hell were the fucking Men of Letters going to sneak up on her twice.


	3. Chapter 3

Sam didn’t go back to his bed. Instead he took out his phone, pulled up recent calls on Skype and let it ring. It was kinda a shitty thing to do, calling in the middle of the night like this, but he needed someone to talk to. The phone rang and rang, and at last it was answered.

“One second, I need a light,” a sleep heavy voice said on the other line. The image brightened suddenly and Sam saw Eileen’s face fill the screen. She signed a tired hello, followed by asking what was wrong.

Sam set his phone down so he could explain. After two years, he was still a little shaky with signing, but he always tried his best and Eileen never made fun of him. Much. It took a while to explain, but Eileen nodded along, signing questions at him from time to time to clarify what exactly was happening. When he finished, she sat thoughtfully for a while.

‘What if that’s the truth?’ she signed. ‘I always worked alone until I met you, and I never trusted other hunters. I don’t know what you’re sister has been through, but people do change.’

‘They’re not just working together,’ Sam signed back. ‘They’re married. Deanna Winchester got married to a monster. No one changes that much.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ signed Eileen, though the way she signed seemed hesitant to Sam. Like she was thinking of saying something else. ‘I never met her, Sam. I don’t know how I can help.’

‘This is enough. It’s just nice to see your face,’ signed Sam. Eileen lit up a little with a smile, and she started signing about the case she was on. Salt and burn, but with some interesting historical details that Sam latched onto as a distraction from his Deanna shaped problem.

‘I should probably let you go to sleep,’ Sam signed the third time he saw Eileen yawning.

‘You don’t have to do that,’ she signed back. ‘We haven’t talked in a while. I think when you’ve sorted out your family crisis and I’m done with this salt and burn we should meet up and research a case together. If you want to, of course.’

‘No, that would- I meant to say yes,’ Sam said hurrying to correct his hands. ‘That would be nice. Awesome. But you should still go to sleep.’

Eileen rolled her eyes, but waved goodbye without putting up a protest. Sam felt a little more clear headed after talking to Eileen. He always did. Someday he was going to try to do something about that, he said to himself. It might take a long fucking time to work up the courage, but someday.

When Sam had met Eileen, she had thought he was just another victim in a case she’d sorted. Sam had caught wind of a vampire nest in California while he was in law school, and had tried to pass it off on the nearest hunter, only to get laughed off the phone by someone telling him not to waste their time. Sam had considered calling in one of the Campbells, and then figured he didn’t want to open that can of worms if he could help. As far as he could tell, there were only one or two vamps anyway, judging by the rate the bodies were dropping at.

So he’d lied to his then girlfriend, Jess, about where he was going that night, dug up his machete from the boxes of things he had never unpacked after officially leaving home, and was on his way. He hadn’t planned on Jess noticing he wasn’t where he was supposed to be on the app that she was always using to figure out where she’d left her phone. She’d ended up driving after him to confront him about lying to her, and the both of them had been kidnapped while in the middle of a huge fight right outside of the warehouse the vampires were staying in.

Suffice to say, there were more than two.

It was lucky they hadn’t figured out Sam was a hunter, since he’d tossed his machete under his car as soon as he saw Jess pull in. Even today he could remember the fear in her eyes and the terror he’d felt as he saw the vampires sucking down another one of their victims and knowing that the two of them were going to be next.

That was when Eileen had barged into the warehouse in all her glory. One of the vampires had exclaimed hunter, and she’d looked right at the thing and said “Vampire,” in dry acknowledgment, before proceeding to behead all five of them within twenty minutes. One of the vamps actually had a gun, and took a shot at her, but missed badly enough that Eileen had time to disarm him, before finishing the job, now on a time crunch before someone called the cops. When she had finished fighting she was covered in blood, sweat, and vampire bits. Sam wasn't sure he’d ever seen anyone look better in his entire life.

“Talk slowly, I can’t hear you,” Eileen had said to Sam, kneeling down next to him and watching his face carefully. “Did they feed either of you any of their blood?”

“We’re clean,” Sam had said. “They didn’t infect us.”

“Sam, what the hell is she talking about?” asked Jess, the kind of anger in her voice that she had only ever used with him once before when he’d told her that she would never meet his parents. Then it had been because Sam had never been able to tell her how complicated his relationship was with his mom and dad, and just wanted to seem normal. Jess had taken it to mean that he wasn’t seriously interested in her and was leading her on. He’d eventually broken down and told her he was having issues at home, and she’d accepted that without the fuss he’d expected. She’d only told him not to lie to her anymore.

Eileen had cut the ropes tying them up, checked the other woman’s pulse and sighed a little before shaking her head and standing up. She looked around the room, gave a shrug at the various bodies lying around, and then walked back out the door. Sam ran after her.

“Wait,” he had said after touching her on the shoulder. He remembered a moment later what Eileen had said and made sure to speak slowly. “Who are you?”

“The person who just saved your life and needs to get out of here before the police show up,” said Eileen back, a little dismissively. “I’m sorry to be rude-

“Sam,” Sam supplied. “Sam Winch-“

“But I need to leave right now,” Eileen had said.

“Wait, just,” Sam had said, shoving down his explanations that he was a hunter too (because he wasn’t actually anymore) or that he just wanted to know her name (because she wouldn’t tell him her real one). So instead he wracked his brain for the ASL course he had taken his sophomore year at Stanford and figured if nothing else he could show his gratitude that she had saved him and Jess. He reached up to his chin with his hand and did his best. Eileen stared at him a moment before rolling her eyes and smiling a little. She repeated the gesture for him, gently correcting him.

“You’re welcome,” she had said back out loud. And then with a little curiosity. “You don’t seem to be in shock.”

“Well I-“

Sam cut himself off when he heard sirens in the distance. He looked back at Eileen.

“Cops. You need to go,” he had said. Eileen nodded gratefully and turned around and started to run. That was about when he had remembered that Jess was here and that she’d been standing behind him watching this conversation.

“Do you know her?” she had asked.

“What? No, I just know that she’s-“ Sam cut himself off and Jess’ glare intensified. “I can’t tell you.”

“Seems like there are a lot of things you can’t tell me. Like why you drove out here in the middle of the night like you knew these freaks were going to be here, or why when some chick straight out of Mad Max shows up and starts cutting people’s heads off, you looked relieved instead of terrified,” Jess had said.

“It’s… it’s about family stuff.”

“Fuck off with that excuse,” Jess had said, shock and fury and sadness mixing together in a way that had a lump forming in Sam’s throat. “That’s what you say every time you don’t want to answer a question. I figured your parents were in the middle of getting divorced or you didn’t get along with your sister, not that you’re all part of some weird beheading fight club. What happened to no more lies, Sam?”

“Jess, you don’t- Look, I couldn’t tell you. I was trying to leave all of this behind-“

“I don’t even know what this is,” Jess had said. She wasn’t crying, but Sam had been able to see the numbness start close in. “What they did to that poor girl. What they were going to do to us. What kind of people do that?”

“Not people,” Sam had said. “Vampires.”

“Vampires? And I’m supposed to believe that?” asked Jess bitterly. “You haven’t been honest with me this whole time. How am I supposed to believe a word you say.”

“Jess.”

“Just… Just fuck off,” said Jess. “I need a fucking minute to think about this.”

“Okay, but we need to go before the cops get here,” Sam had said. Jess stared at him, before taking her keys out of her pocket and walking off to her car without another word. Sam followed suit with his own car, and they only just avoided being caught driving away.

A lot of explanations, fights, and Jess angrily walking off to think had led to Sam coming home and finding a note that Jess was going home for a week to sort out exactly what she thought about all of this. A week went by, and when Jess still hadn’t come back, Sam broke down and called Deanna’s cell. He had been surprised when his dad answered instead, but that hadn’t stopped it all from pouring out. What John had said back had been simple and direct. Come home.

So Sam had gone through the process of packing up all of his things, putting them into boxes and hiring a moving company that would get him out to Kansas. It took him about a week, and on the day before he was about to leave was when Jess had come home.

“Sam we need to talk- You’re leaving?” she had asked him.

“Isn’t that what you want?”

Jess had frowned at him, but instead of yelling she just looked tired.

“It’s not the… the monster stuff. It’s the lying Sam,” she said. “Over and over and over again. I told you how much that hurt me, and you kept doing it. And then you got mad at me when I found out, like it’s my fault you had this huge secret that I didn’t know.”

“I know. And that’s why I’m leaving,” Sam had said. “I love you. I want you to be happy, and you’re… not. Not with me here.”

“But what about school?” Jess had asked. After seeing Sam shrug, her frown had deepened further. “You’re just going to give up on all your dreams, just like that?”

“Y’know, I don’t think I even want to be a lawyer?” Sam had said, like it was a question. “It was just… the opposite of what I was supposed to be. Or the opposite of what I thought I was supposed to be. When you left, I thought about it over and over again and the most awake I’ve been in years was when we were in that warehouse and I don’t know what to do with that.”

Jess had wrapped her arms around herself and Sam had been struck by how small she looked. He hated himself a little for making her look that uncertain. She had always had her head screwed on straighter than he had.

“But you’ll be safe,” she had said slowly.

“Of course,” Sam lied to her. Jess seemed to know, but she didn’t correct him and the next day he left and the whole time in between she didn’t say another word to him. Three days later, Sam deleted her phone number so he wouldn’t be tempted to call, just to hear her voice.

Sam laid awake the night after his conversation with Deanna thinking about that last fight with Jess, and all the roads his life might have gone down if even one detail had been changed. He couldn’t really see himself getting hitched to a goddess stuck in a rock, but without Eileen to focus on finding he would have been lost after losing Jess and giving up on his little dream of normality and finding out Deanna had disappeared on top of it all. Eileen had become the focus of his attention, and he had just known he had to meet her one more time.

That had been easier said than done. Hunters were good at not being found, as Deanna’s long disappearance was testament to. Add that to the fact that even among other hunters Eileen wasn’t really a known entity, and Sam had struck out until he’d visited a nursing home with an elderly woman who when asked about a deaf woman and been shown a sketch Sam had had done of Eileen, had visibly stiffened. Sam had latched on instantly.

“I need to find her,” Sam had said. “I’m a hunter too. Eileen helped you with a banshee, right?”

Mildred had been suspicious for only a minute longer before she’d slowly started to trust him. At the end of an hour she called Eileen on her phone with Skype and waited for her to answer. Eileen came on a moment later and the two of them had a long conversation signing to each other about Sam, none of which Sam had understood.

“She’s willing to meet with you,” Mildred had said at last. “And it’s rude to take advantage of someone’s trusting nature. I am not a fool, Sam. You had to know that I would never let anyone harmful get close to her, and I would never tell you where she was.”

“Sorry,” Sam had said appropriately chastised. “But I am a hunter, and I do want to find her. I just needed to- She helped me out of a tough spot and I guess I wanted to… I don’t know.”

Mildred had frowned at him a moment before her eyes lit up with something that looked a lot like realization.

“Oh, I see,” she had said with a sly little smile. “Well you do seem like a charming man. Only remember, I’m old and good looking and the time it’ll take for a jury to convict me for murder is probably longer than I have left to live. So I have no incentive not to take extreme measures if you hurt her.”

Sam had thought that was a speech for the ages. It was almost as bad as the speech Deanna had given Anthony Broker after he’d shoved Sam down a flight of stairs.

“I sometimes think Eileen gets very lonely,” Mildred had continued in a less homicidal manner. “She’s always working poor thing, and she hardly stays in touch with anyone. I only ever see her at Christmas. Please be careful with her.”

Sam had taken this warning in mind when he’d met with Eileen for coffee. It had been hard to remember when actually talking to Eileen. First of all, she had made him prove he wasn’t a monster six ways till Sunday in the middle of a restaurant and used half a dozen tests that were fake just to see if he was really a hunter. She’d remembered him from the vamp case, and apparently was no small amount of suspicious how he had found her.

“Campbell,” Sam had said after the sixteenth test she tried to put him through before allowing him to talk to her. “You know about them right?”

“Enough to know they get hunters killed and don’t care about you if you’re not their family,” Eileen had said warily. “You’re really a hunter?”

“Yeah,” Sam had said, even though he wasn’t sure yet. Deanna’s spot in the Men of Letters had been offered to him by his dad, but it had felt wrong to take it somehow. Like he would be stealing from her, even though she had already freely given it up.

“Well, you aren’t very good yet,” said Eileen, which, considering the last time she’d seen him he’d been nabbed by vamps, was probably a fair criticism. “The Campbells must be losing the top notch quality they’re so proud of.”

“I never actually… I kind of struck out on my own for a while,” Sam said. He accepted his coffee from the confused looking waiter who just sighed in resignation when he saw all the salt, water, and strange powders that were now strewn across the table. Eileen wordlessly handed him a fifty dollar bill, which made him brighten a little before he walked off. “I’ve been doing some cases since that day with the vamps. Small stuff.”

“Try not to get yourself killed,” Eileen had said, only barely managing to not sound condescending.

“Or you could teach me,” Sam had said.

“I work alone,” said Eileen, pouring creamer into her coffee until it was light and then reaching for her flask and adding a small splash. Sam had given her a look, to which she’d raised her eyebrow a little and said: “I like my coffee how I like myself. Very Irish.”

“I could get used to that,” Sam had said quickly. “I just… I could use a friend right now.”

“I’m not a good friend.”

“Yeah, well neither am I,” Sam had said back, looking directly at Eileen. “One hunt?”

“One,” she had said, taking a deep sip of her coffee and looking like she already regretted the answer.

One had turned into two had turned into a series of hunts and an actual friendship and Skype calls, and the person Sam had been closest to in a long time. He had felt dully guilty about what had happened with Jess at first, which was what had kept him from trying for something more than friendship with Eileen. After a while it got to the point where Sam realized that if Eileen cut him out of her life the way Jess had he would be devastated and that had terrified him. So he thought about it, but he never said anything to her about how he felt.

His dad had been surprised to hear about Eileen, since he knew that she was a legacy from the now defunct Irish chapter of the Men of Letter, most of whose members had been killed in cold blood by the British chapter, including Eileen’s godparents, who had taken her in after her parents had been murdered by a banshee, the same one Eileen had taken out when she met Mildred. An Irish hunter had taken the young Eileen in as her own and fled to the states, where refuge was being offered and all British Men of Letters were banned from entering the country. They complied, if only because they loved their rules so dearly.

Sam had gotten into the habit of taking cases the Men of Letter sent him on, and had settled into a kind of hybrid between hunting and being a legacy, with a strong lean towards hunting. Everything he’d thought about hunting when he was younger had proved to be false, and he’d only ever met incredibly intelligent and capable people in the field. Not that some hunters he knew didn’t have insurmountable flaws, but they weren’t dumb. Dumb hunters ended up dead quickly.

It was early morning and a night spent thinking that brought his dad to ask him what the hell he had been doing, breaking the recording device in the interrogation room. Sam had spun it as a negotiation tactic, which calmed his dad down somewhat.

“I’m sorry,” John said when Sam had finished explaining. “I just… I have to save your sister.”

“What if she doesn’t want that?” Sam had asked quietly. “She keeps telling me she and Cas are happy together.”

“Because that thing is making her think she’s happy,” John said quietly, and for a second Sam could catch something off about his voice. “It doesn’t count. It’s not real.”

“But what if it is?”

“It’s not,” said John, absolute certainty distilled into a voice. “I promise you son, that is not the Deanna either of us know. But we will get her back.”

Sam watched his dad walk away and sighed. Back to the interrogation room, he supposed.


	4. Chapter 4

Deanna only had to wait a few hours before Sam came back. He looked like he hadn’t slept even a little, so the had that in common at least. He also came back with an audience, if the fact that John Winchester was standing at his shoulder at the open door right before Sam closed was anything to guess by. Deanna had decided she didn’t care anymore. She wanted out, and she was going to get out no matter what it took.

No matter what it took.

“Is Dad listening?” Deanna asked as Sam walked in. He nodded to her. “Good. Go ahead with the interrogation then, Sammy. Just make sure you want to hear what I have to say first.”

“I want the truth,” Sam said.

“No you don’t, but I’ll tell you it anyway,” said Deanna. “Ask away, kiddo. I’m tired and I don’t want the weight of this family’s shit on my shoulders when I get old. Just remember, Sam, you gotta ask the right questions.”

“What does that mean?” Sam asked. Deanna took a deep breath and tried to see if there was a shorthand way she could relay her various neuroses and hangups and the walls that she’d built over certain aspects of her life and just how fucking awful it was to talk about any of it.

The first time she and Cas had tried to remove the binding spell, Deanna had cried at random intervals for nearly two days after. It was when they had just met each other, and it wasn’t even like Deanna had particularly liked Cas back then. She’d been convenient to have around, and wasn’t the worst company in the world, and even though their heads were still pretty mixed up together she knew how to be quiet about Deanna’s thoughts. She poked and prodded sometimes, but only if she sensed Deanna was in the sharing mood, which Cas seemed to have figured out down to a science.

All that didn’t mean that Deanna hadn’t felt a certain sense of relief that she was finally going to get all of her privacy back without her own personal weirdo riding shotgun in her head anymore. Again, Cas was good company but that was it, and it was time for ET to go home. Then they’d tried the spell, and it had started to work, shifting Cas’ binding spell to a pendant they had found that was powerful enough to contain it. Deanna had felt Cas slowly slipping away from her, and that same fear of being left behind that had taunted her all her life had panged through her so quickly she almost didn’t register that the spell had instantly reversed itself at her second of hesitation. Cas had stared at her afterwards in silent question, and then the tears had come and Deanna hadn’t known how to stop them.

“It’s okay,” Cas had told her, gently rubbing circles into her back as Deanna sobbed her heart out. “We can try again, Deanna. It’s fine.”

And they did try again. Five times in total, to be exact. For the first four, Deanna knew she was the reason they failed. The more she had thought about it, the more she realized she didn’t want to lose Cas. Something very affectionate had made itself a place in her heart for the way Cas would say hello to potted plants when they were supposed to be interviewing people, or the worried look she would get when Cas felt Deanna get injured during a hunt, or even just the malicious glare Cas had perfected for when Deanna played her music over a certain amount of decibels in the quiet hours of the morning.

Cas had put off shifting the spell for a while when Deanna convinced her it would be more useful to know what they were both thinking while they were looking for Charlie. But they found Charlie, and then they came back, and Deanna didn’t have any more excuses at her fingertips to hold on to what wasn’t hers.

After the fourth time Deanna failed to let go, Cas had finally snapped.

“Do you want to break this or not?” Cas had demanded when Deanna had pulled back yet again.

“I- I don’t- Look, Cas, I’m doing the best that I can,” Deanna had lied, because if she didn’t she would have had to admit she knew she could let Cas go if she tried hard enough now, but she didn’t want to. All her life she’d felt so damn alone, and suddenly she wasn’t. There was no more buzzing under her skin to move before she was dead or that awful numb quiet in which she drank away the dark thoughts that tried to drown her. Instead there was always Cas humming along pleasantly in the background of her head, and Deanna needed it now. She didn’t know what would happen to her when Cas was gone.

Still, that wasn’t fair to Cas. Deanna had a relatively short lifespan compared to whatever the hell Cas was, and the binding spell meant that as soon as Deanna’s soul left her body, Cas would be dragged along with her. Fucking awful as it was going to be to let her go, Deanna couldn’t bear the thought of forcing mortality onto someone. That had to break a few brain cells, and that wasn’t even getting into the fact that Cas clearly wanted out and that was something Deanna needed to respect.

So they’d tried a fifth time, and Deanna had done it. She’d stood resolute and with her full consent gave Cas leave to transfer the spell from her to the pendant. Cas had concentrated and kept concentrating, and Deanna had waited for everything to start fading away again, but every time it started to happen, it had snapped back into place.

“It’s not me,” Deanna had said as Cas closed her eyes and furrowed her brow and pushed to shift the bond another time. Once again, it snapped right back into place just as it seemed to be about to let go. And Cas had glared at her and glared at her. “I swear to God, Cas, it’s not me.”

“It is you,” Cas had said softly. Angrily, like she couldn’t quite believe it. “It must be mutually broken, with consent freely given.”

“I’m telling you, I’m letting you go.”

“Mutually broken,” Cas had said again, arms crossing her chest in the strangest temper tantrum Deanna had ever seen. “And I don’t consent. It aches to think about, as though removing you were removing a limb. I can’t make myself.”

“Cas,” Deanna had said after a second spent in an awed stupor. She wanted to tell her not to be stupid, but she couldn’t say the words out loud. Cas quelled any further words from Deanna with a little look of confused fury anyway.

“You strange human, what have you done to me?” Cas had said.

They’d already slept together at that point, but Deanna hadn’t been under any impression that that meant anything. Gods slept with humans for fun, to torment them, because they could, or for a million other reasons, but love was rarely one of them. At least that’s how the stories went. Besides, fighting alongside the rebellion in Oz had led to an increasing amount of tension between that had resolved itself in spectacular (and if Charlie was to be believed, eye scarring) fashion.

Deanna had left this part out when talking to Sam because her and Cas’ story was crazy enough without adding in that they fell in love while fighting the wicked witch of the west. So, of course this is where she started in her quest to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. She had shouldered these people’s secrets, and they had repaid her by capturing her and removing her from one of the few sources of happiness she had had in years. Let them all burn, but let John Winchester burn especially.

“I lied about Cas. Well, I sorta lied about Cas,” said Deanna. “We met like I said, but I didn’t just agree to let her in when I was tied to that rock. I made her promise that if I saved her, she’d help me save Charlie, who’d gotten herself sucked up in a portal to another dimension while trying to outrun a shifter. That’s what you get for using magic, Sammy, I swear.”

“You made a deal,” Sam answered instantly, just like Deanna knew he would. That was breaking rule number one right there, and Deanna may have made her way through that list of rules but she had a feeling Sam thought that even she wouldn’t touch that one.

“And that’s why I didn’t tell you the first time through,” said Deanna. “Yeah, so sue me. I was alone, and I’d just lost someone I counted as a sister and I wanted to find her. And then I heard about a town in Missouri where you can have any wish you want granted if you have the cash. Cas was the most powerful thing I’d ever heard of, so I figured why not give it a shot. Wasn’t planning on getting kidnapped, but hey, them’s the breaks.”

“So it wasn’t all good will and rainbows at first, then.”

“Good will? Hell no. Rainbows? Kinda,” said Deanna. “I mean I wasn’t blind, Sam. Have you seen Cas’ body?”

Sam shifted uncomfortably.

“Don’t answer that, I’ll have to defend her honor,” said Deanna with a smirk that she knew didn’t quite reach her eyes. “And she held up her part of the deal. We found Charlie, kicked some flying monkeys’ butts, and headed home. Spent ten years kicking ass, actually.”

Sam stared at Deanna, a complete lack of comprehension on his face.

“Can you see why I gave you the cliff notes version?” said Deanna. “Time’s weird in Oz. You don’t age as fast there, and Oz time doesn’t keep a steady pace with our reality. Cas explained it to me, once, but after a while she stopped using English and started using equations from math that doesn’t exist yet, and I can’t handle that on a good day.”

“Oz like…?” Sam asked, trailing off in wonder.

“That’d be the one. Ever wonder what happened to legacy Dorothy Baum?” asked Deanna. “I sure didn’t.”

“I have so many questions,” Sam said. Deanna raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Like I said, make sure you’re asking the right ones,” said Deanna. “We’re gonna cover everything, trust me. You wanna go forwards or backwards?”

Deanna could see the look on Sam’s face start to change. He finally caught on to what Deanna was saying then. Ask anything, and I’ll answer. One time only deal.

“Is it just Cas?” asked Sam after a second, turning a little red. “I mean, I don’t want to be offensive, but it’s weird that you just suddenly like girls when whatever kind of monster Cas is shows up and possesses you like demons do. And don’t look at me like that, you said she used your body to kill that witch. The way you said it, it was exactly like people describe being possessed.”

Deanna felt that thought that she avoided poking at her again. Because she’d wondered at what Cas was for a long time, but there had always been a small voice in the back of her head that told her not to look too closely at it. Not to question it. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, it seemed to whisper to her, a command from on high.

But Deanna knew, even if she didn’t think it. Even if she didn’t name it. With consent freely given was powerful to any god, much more powerful than what was taken by force. But no gods treated consent with the sacredness or insistence Cas did.

“There’s nothing sudden about it. You just didn’t notice,” said Deanna, a little sharply. “What, you really thought Jo and I were just friends? We never let you hang out with us. Why do you think that was?”

That shut Sam up. For a moment at least.

“Okay, so you love Cas,” he said slowly.

“That’s what I’ve been saying for the last two fucking weeks,” said Deanna. “Ask better questions Sam.”

Sam stared at her a while before shaking his head. He looked a little angry now.

“I don’t want to play this game,” said Sam. “You have something to say, just say it. Whatever it is, I’m listening.”

And there it was. Permission. Deanna stood up and walked over to the one sided mirror and stared at her reflection. In her mind she imagined her dad on the other side, same masculine chin Deanna had always felt self conscious about, but none of the more delicate features Deanna had inherited from her mother. Still, a little imagination and it wasn’t hard to turn her face into his. Pretend she could see him staring back.

“Ask me why I left,” Deanna said.

“Why did you leave?”

Sam sounded wary. Good. He should be.

“You always wanted to be a legacy, Sammy,” said Deanna. “And I always wanted to be a hunter. The solution seemed so fucking simple. So I asked mom to teach me how to hunt. Just a trial run, and if it worked out, you and me would get the future we really wanted. So fucking simple.”

Deanna didn’t look at Sam, kept her eyes locked on her reflection. A quiet chant had started sounding in her head to the tune of ‘don’t tell Sammy, don’t tell Sammy, don’t tell Sammy’ that she had listened to her whole life. And she loved her brother, but he needed to know the horrors their family had in their closet.

“It was an easy hunt,” said Deanna. “Just a salt and burn. The ghost wasn’t even that angry. We split up, mom and I dealing with the ghost while dad burned the body. Casper threw a headstone at me and I ducked. I was fine, but some of the rubble rebounded. Mom was dead before she hit the ground. I think she was moving towards me to make sure I wound up okay.”

Dead silence. And then-

“What?” Sam asked, starting to sound a little scared. Not of the right thing, of course. He was scared Deanna was losing it. If only.

“I was fourteen when mom died. You were ten. Sometimes I wonder if you remember what she was really like,” Deanna continued hollowly. “Sometimes I think you didn’t even notice, Sammy.”

“Deanna, you’re not making any sense. Mom is right outside. She’s probably watching us right now,” said Sam. Deanna let out a bitter little laugh.

“Yeah, you got me there,” said Deanna. She wondered what her mother was feeling right now. Wondered if her mother could still feel, or if that was a lie, too. “The ghost went up in flames, and Dad found me there next to her body. I didn’t know what to do. Dad told me to go get sticks and stones and rope, anything I could find. I was so goddamn numb, I just did it. Didn’t even question it.”

Deanna could still remember that night down to the tiny details, like the splinters in her hands that made her eyes water. How horrified she’d been that she couldn’t cry for her mother but she could hardly keep the tears from falling over a piece of wood stuck under her fingernail. Then there was that desperate hopeless feeling that just kept building as she realized again and again that her mother was dead and it was her fault. If only she’d just accepted things the way they were, if only she hadn’t pushed, if only she’d done what she was told.

“There’s a spell,” said Deanna flatly. “I held mom’s heart in my hands while dad said it. It was still twitching.”

“You’re lying.”

“For once in my life, I’m not,” said Deanna, still not looking at Sam. She’d never make it through if she did. No, these words were for her father and him alone. “The spell was finished and Mom was back. And Dad? I forgive you for that. I know what it’s like to lose. I know the fucking horror of it. I forgive you for everything that happened that night.”

Deanna let the pause sink in. Let the weight of what was to come settle in. If nothing else, John Winchester deserved to prepare for everything he pretended to come crashing down around him.

“But I don’t forgive you for the rest of it,” said Deanna. “Is this what you wanted Mom to be like? Agreeing to every little thing you said? Sam, don’t you remember the way Mom and Dad used to fight? Suddenly you have the perfect marriage, and I wasn’t supposed to figure out why, Dad?”

And this was it. The thread of unreality and terror that had run just under the surface of Deanna’s life was coming unraveled, and damn it felt good. Like crying yourself raw.

“You think I don’t know why you need me to be under some kind of spell right now? I mean, I guess you just can’t imagine love any other way. Would Mom even be here if you didn’t make her? It’s almost fucking funny how scared you are that someone is going to do to me what you did to her. I looked up that spell, and you don’t need to subject the puppet to your will. You chose to do that, because you’re a control freak that can’t accept Mom is dead and had a panic attack when you figured out that the rag doll you replaced her with still wanted to live her own fucking life. What you have now is no better than a photograph, only it’s so much worse because she’s still Mom deep down. And she’s terrified of you.”

“Deanna,” Sam said, voice small. Deanna closed her eyes at the pained tone her brother was using. He may be the size of a house, but in Deanna’s head he was always the annoying ten year old kid who was her sole point of sanity after her mother had died. Who needed her to be strong and pretend everything was the same. That everything was alright.

“And the only freedom I can give her,” Deanna said to her father, telling herself she would talk to Sam later. There would be time for that, but right now she needed to finish. “I have to command. Choose for yourself, that’s an order. Is it free will if you have to have it? Who the hell knows. All I know is that I can’t save Mom, and I can’t save you, and I couldn’t stop Sam from leaving. But when I’m with Cas, it all feels a little farther away. You don’t get to take that away from me too. You just don’t.”

Deanna could hear the chair falling to the ground as Sam stood up. She wasn’t surprised when he fled the room, and she ignored the bone deep ache to go comfort him. Instead she kept staring at her reflection, knowing that her dad was on the other side staring back. She hoped he appreciated what a sight she made. And deep, deep down she also hoped he’d forgive her someday for tearing his illusions away. Then again, it would be a cold day in hell before she forgave him for the secrets he’d made her keep, so it was probably wise if neither of them held their breath for that particular reconciliation.


	5. Chapter 5

”Is it true?” Sam asked as soon as the door slammed behind him. He could see his dad standing there in front of the window into the interrogation room, staring at a Deanna who gives every appearance of being able to stare back at him. Later, Sam will think about the dead look in his father’s eyes, and the way he closed them and leant his forehead against the glass when he heard Sam’s voice. But this wasn’t later, and Sam was blind with fury.

His father didn’t say a word when Sam yanked him around and punched him in the face.

It was strange how it had never occurred to Sam before now that he was taller than his father. That the imposing man he had looked up to and railed against all of his life was starting to get old, and just didn’t have the same strength he used to. It wouldn’t have mattered either way, since John Winchester didn’t raise an arm to defend himself. He took the blow with a hollow kind of dignity that made Sam hate him all the more.

He only got two blows in before his arm was twisted behind his back and Sam was pushed away from his father by familiar hands. The hands that had pushed his hair back when he was sick and cut the crusts off of Deanna’s sandwiches and were made of sticks and stones, and God, how had Sam not known.

“That’s enough, Sam,” said his mother, voice hard. Sam stared at her a moment and then looked up at his dad.

“You’re using her as a shield. That’s… that’s low, Dad,” said Sam.

“Mary,” John said quietly. “Step aside.”

Mary’s teeth clenched together and her fists balled up but she did as he said.

“Hit me if it makes you feel better,” said John. Sam stood in front of him, seething. He took a step forward, but didn’t raise his fists again.

“Sam, if you kill him, you kill me too,” said Mary. Sam took a deep breath, trying to figure out if his mom was defending his dad because she wanted to or because he was making her. Trying to figure out what was real and what wasn’t. And he couldn’t do it.

“Why are you defending him. He-“ Sam said, too angry to speak for a moment. “Look what he did to you!”

There was silence for a while, and then one of the other men of letters cleared his throat and stepped in front of Sam, palms forward in a gesture of concession. He didn’t look surprised, and it slowly dawned on Sam why. He knew. They all knew. Everyone except him.

“I can’t be here,” Sam said, understanding intimately how Deanna must have felt every second since she was fourteen until she finally made her escape. “I just- I can’t be here.”

No one stopped him walking out the door. Mary followed him, but didn’t say anything to him and Sam couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t make sense of what was happening. The world he knew had twisted in on itself, and it was as though he had been transplanted into someone else’s life. And the way Deanna had told him had even more fury running through his veins. She hadn’t even looked at him. She’d been grieving for their mother since she was fourteen, and she’d had time to process it, but when she finally told him the truth, she hand’t even looked at him.

Sam took off in his SUV that Deanna would hate if she ever saw it. He felt a spiteful little tick of satisfaction at that, before the dark anger returned. It had started when he learned about his mother’s death and subsequent almost resurrection, and wasn’t done winding his way through him yet.

He called Eileen after driving ten hours in her direction.

‘I need you here,’ he’d signed to her, and she’d nodded and said she was on her way.

She was closer than he thought, and it occurred to Sam that she’d probably already wrapped up her case and had been heading in his general direction, while looking for another case to pass the time. That touched on a small spot of warmth that lasted him until she walked through the door.

‘Are you okay?’ Eileen signed at him, and Sam just stared at her. He didn’t want to think about what had happened and he didn’t want to talk about it with her, so he nodded a little and let Eileen walk up to him and hug him and wrapped his arms around her. It felt like being able to breathe for a moment.

When Eileen let go, there was that frisson of tension that had existed between them for a long time. The one they both ignored, only Sam wasn’t really in his right head this time. So instead of taking a step back and trying to deal with what had happened in a responsible manner, he leaned down and kissed Eileen for the first time.

He’d regret that later. She deserved better than that and so did he, but all Sam could think at the moment was that he didn’t want to think. When he ended the kiss, Eileen had her eyes closed. It took her a second to open them.

“Is this okay?” he mouthed at her slowly, one hand still resting on her face. Eileen nodded resolutely, a sad little smile playing on her face before she dragged him down again to kiss him. They shed their clothes like they were starving for each other, and later Sam hissed a little at the scratch marks on his back stinging when he lay back heavily on the bed lying next to Eileen. It had been good. It had been so completely the wrong time.

“I’m selfish,” Eileen said out loud, staring up at the ceiling. “I’m sorry. I told you I wasn’t a good friend.”

Sam didn’t say anything. Eileen got out of bed and disappeared behind the bathroom door. A few seconds later, Sam heard the shower start. He sat up and started looking for his clothes, and then picked up Eileen’s carefully folding them before putting them in a pile outside the bathroom. He left a note on the bed saying he would be back soon and went outside to give Eileen a moment of privacy.

Outside, he bought himself a soda and drank it slowly. He had run and he had pushed every thought out of his head and potentially ruined one of the closest friendships he’d ever had, and believe it or not Sam did have the self awareness to know this wasn’t how he should be responding to what he had learned. Still, he couldn’t force himself to process it. Because that would mean accepting it, and accepting it would mean letting every awful implication sink in.

“Sam,” Eileen said behind him. Sam turned around from where he’d been resting on the wall. She asked him to come back to the room so they could talk, so Sam swallowed the panic at having to face what he had learned. Instead of thinking about it, he placed it someplace far away in the back of his head. Then he sat down in the chair across from Eileen and told her everything.

When he finished, Eileen reached for his hand and squeezed it a moment before pulling back, suddenly looking uncomfortable. She looked away from Sam awkwardly before seeming to pretend that nothing had happened.

‘We need to let your sister out,’ she signed at him. ‘You know that, right?’

‘I know,’ Sam signed back. ‘I just haven’t figured out how.’

Eileen frowned a little, her forehead scrunching up as she thought. Suddenly her face relaxed, and a sudden grin spread across her face.

‘I might be able to help with that.’

Eileen laid out her plan and, with a few adjustments from Sam, they had a solid working strategy of breaking Deanna out of the Men of Letters bunker. Once they’d gotten a sense for the details and a few alternatives if anything went wrong, they each got into their separate cars and started the long drive back to Kansas.

Sam spent a good deal of the eight hours they spent driving most of the way back to the bunker swinging between a thorough examination of every one of his childhood memories and berating himself for initiating something that Eileen clearly now regretted.

Maybe it had all been in his head, the idea that she liked him as more than a friend. That there was something there that could last. After all, obviously his perception of the world around him was pretty messed up if he hadn’t figured out his mother had been dead for almost two decades.

Sometimes I think you didn’t even notice, Deanna’s voice said in his head, and Sam pulled over. Jesus Christ, he wanted to hit something or throw up or turn in the opposite direction and start driving as far away as he could again. Eileen’s car ended up pulling over about two hundred feet ahead of him. She didn’t get out of the car, and he was glad about that because there was no guarantee he wouldn’t just start shouting at her.

Instead he closed his eyes and took deep breaths, counting to ten over and over again until he started to feel like he could at least control the emotions that were coursing through him. At long last he started the engine, and pulled back onto the road. Eileen followed suit once he’d passed her, and off they were again on the rescue mission. For the last half hour of the drive, Sam managed to narrow down his thoughts to just that. Get Deanna out, and he would deal with the rest later.


	6. Chapter 6

The morning after Sam had stormed out of her makeshift cell, Deanna had decided it was time make an attempt at an escape. Sam would likely come back for her, though she didn’t know the timeframe on that, and if she got out before that happened, she could find her brother later. He didn’t keep as low a profile as she did, and they had mutual friends that wouldn’t seem out of place contacting Sam.

Deanna sat on her bed, clasped her hands together and bent her head down slightly.

‘Cas, I hope you have you’re listening ears on,’ she said. ‘We’re getting out today. Or we’re gonna try at least. Sam mentioned Kevin has the room closest to you. Get him, and tell him that I’m calling in that favor he owes me. He knows which one. I know they like to stick Garth on guard duty ‘cause he doesn’t need as much sleep, and you haven’t given them any trouble yet, so chances are there’s no one else watching. All Kevin has to do is remove the warding, tell him that. He can make it look like an accident if he wants. And tell Garth I’m sorry I’m gonna have to knock him out, and I hope Bess and the kids are doing well.’

That finished, Deanna waited. She almost prayed again, but she knew she would get shit for that later from Cas. She’d been reminded fifty or sixty times that Cas can recall every single word from every single conversation they’ve ever had (which made it even stranger that before she was Artemis, there was just nothing). So repeating instructions would be futile.

Two hours later, at long last, she started to feel something testing at the edge of her consciousness, and Deanna let out an actual sigh of relief. There was Cas again, humming along in the back of her head, swirls of light and colors mixed with the occasional word or image. Cas had to actively focus to put her mind into any sense of understandable order for Deanna, and most of the time she didn’t bother and Deanna enjoyed the light show.

‘What happens next?’ Cas asked.

‘Stay put. I’m coming for you,’ Deanna thought back. ‘We’ve got a little while before night fall. That’ll be the best time for me to break out. Hang tight.’

Cas affirmed this and then began a careful but thorough examination of what had happened in the two weeks since she and Deanna had been separated. She tapped at first, and Deanna relented, letting her scrub through her memories at a rate that was a little sickening to witness. Deanna carefully shut it out and took deep breaths until Cas had finished.

‘Sorry,’ Cas said quietly. ‘And I’m sorry you had to tell him that way.’

Deanna didn’t say anything and Cas took the hint. Instead Deanna was let in, at a much slower pace, to several conversations Cas had had with Kevin over the course of the last few days. Deanna knew he would be a good choice for this. Unlike most of the Men of Letters, Kevin had never swallowed all of the Koolaid. It wasn’t a huge shocker that he would accidentally on purpose take an academic interest in Cas, and be unable to keep himself from talking to her despite likely having orders to do the opposite.

Kevin was mostly hesitant in their conversations, until Cas would mention some historical event or other, and he would start insisting it can’t have happened the way she was saying. Cas, with her oddly intermittent sense of humor, had in fact started making up lies to entertain herself, though she eventually came clean about most of them. The key word being most.

‘I’m a bad influence on you,’ Deanna thought to herself with a soft smile she wished Cas could see. Sometimes she was sure that it just wasn’t normal to be this crazy about someone. It certainly hadn’t worked out for most people she knew that fell this hard.

‘You are certainly an influence,’ Cas said back wryly.

‘Did Nero really fiddle as Rome fell?’ Deanna asked.

‘I wasn’t there. But I know someone who was, and they insist it happened,’ said Cas.

‘Am I ever going to get to meet this friend of yours, Cas?’

‘Over my dead body,’ said Cas, her alarm whirling through dark blue and a striking shade of purple before she managed to turn them into words again. ‘He is not kind, Deanna. And you would be an ant to him. Perhaps worth killing out of sheer amusement.’

‘So that’s a maybe.’

‘No.’

By this time, it was starting to get close to nightfall. When Deanna’s lights dimmed slightly, she knew it was time to act.

‘We can talk about this later,’ Deanna said, ignoring Cas’ pissy answer in return. Instead, she walked up to the camera that was monitoring her and tore off fabric from the bottom of her pants to tie around it. Next she hid under the bed and waited for someone to come investigate.

Twenty minutes of waiting finally yielded results. It was some fresh faced kid, likely stuck monitoring her while the old men slept and Deanna almost felt bad about grabbing his ankle and yanking. He went down with an indignant squawk, and Deanna had her hand over his mouth in seconds.

“Look kid, here’s how this is going to work. I’m going to be getting out of here. You can let me go, or we can do this the hard way.”

The kid tried to bite Deanna’s hand, and she shifted her arms so she had him in a chokehold. Soon enough he was unconscious and Deanna hauled him up so he was lying in her makeshift bed. Then she pulled the sheet over him and removed the fabric blocking the camera. If luck was on her side, it would look like she was still sleeping to anyone who came to investigate.

“Sorry, kid,” she said quietly on the way out.

She closed the door and heard it lock behind her. She crept along the hallways between her and Cas until she heard someone walking along one of them. In order to avoid discovery, she pressed herself back against a doorway and watched as someone who was very familiarly tall stalked past her like a man on a mission.

“Hiya, Sammy,” Deanna said, just loud enough so he could hear her. Sam spun around and glared at her, having nearly jumped out of his skin. “Surprise.”

“How’d you get out?” Sam asked, looking toward the interrogation room and then back at her. Deanna managed a mischievous smile, because clearly they were both on board with pretending for now that things were normal between them.

“Y’all are slackers, that’s how,” said Deanna. “Listen, we need to hurry and get Cas before someone notices I’m not where I’m supposed to be.”

“We might have more time than you think,” Sam said, just as the lights started to turn red and a long alarm sounded. Cas reached out briefly in Deanna’s head and asked what was going on.

“What’s that?” Deanna asked Sam cautiously.

“Eileen,” he said, which didn’t make a lick of sense, but Deanna didn’t have time to question it before she saw people coming and she dragged Sam out of their line of sight. “My, uh, partner. For hunting. Sometimes.”

Deanna played that sentence over in her head for a second.

“She sounds cute,” she said, raising one eyebrow just a little.

“Shut up, Deanna,” said Sam. “We need to move.”

They made their way toward the dungeon stealthily, avoiding the Men of Letters who were hurrying to the war room to figure out what the hell was going on. It was almost too easy, and Deanna trailed her hands along the walls of the building in a silent thank you. By the time they got to the dungeons, her heart was in her throat and she’d stopped listening for footsteps or checking around every corner. She just needed to see Cas again.

Garth was still dutifully standing guard at the entrance to the dungeon, and he looked less than surprised to see Deanna there, so chances were good that Cas had followed her instructions to the letter.

“Hey Garth,” said Deanna quietly. Garth smiled at her warmly, and she felt guilt hit her deep in her gut. She hadn’t treated Garth that well before she left. She’d been a different person then and she’d always thought monsters were monsters, and Garth had become one of the things the Men of Letters was supposed to be saving people from.

“Long time, no see,” he said, not even hesitating before going in for a hug. Deanna rolled her eyes a little and hugged back, secretly relieved that he didn’t seem to be holding a grudge against her. Garth had always been too forgiving for his own good.

“You’re helping us?” Sam asked, and Deanna turned around to see him frowning. Deanna mouthed at him to shut up, but Sam ignored her. “Garth, they’re not gonna let this go easy.”

“I don’t like seeing people locked up who don’t deserve it,” said Garth. “We got no proof this Cas girl is bad, and it don’t sit right with me that we got her chained up like an animal when we don’t know if she’s done a thing to deserve it.”

“‘Sides,” Deanna said stepping forward and giving Garth a warning glance and waiting for his nod before punching him hard across the face. He went down and sprawled across the floor, unconscious. “No one has to know he cooperated.”

Sam was staring at her.

“What?” Deanna asked, carefully picking up Garth’s body and sitting him up against the corner, figuring that was slightly better than just leaving him in the middle of the floor.

“Nothing,” said Sam. “Just… you really have been hunting, haven’t you?”

“Hunting. Fighting a war for ten years. Having Cas kick my ass into shape when I almost got killed my first hunt after we- after I took on her binding spell,” said Deanna. God, she remembered how fucking sore she’d been the first time Cas had put her through her paces learning how to fight. “And Cas, little ray of sunshine that she is, likes to fight dirty.”

Sam frowned at her and then shook his head.

“It might not be mind control,” he said after a second. “But you two have a weird relationship.”

Deanna waved off his concern and walked into the dungeon to see Cas sitting there crosslegged with her eyes closed. She opened them as soon as Deanna was in the room and snapped her chains with a loud clank, as she rose fluidly to her feet. For a second they just stood there and stared at each other, because Deanna had forgotten somehow in two weeks how fucking breathtaking Cas was.

“Hey there, dork,” she said out loud, because she was a lot of things but sappy wasn’t one of them. Most of the time. “Miss me?”

“Of course,” said Cas before walking up to her and hugging her, squeezing just this side of too tight. Deanna buried her head in the side of Cas’ neck and breathed in deep, squeezing back. Having Cas back in her head was nice, but having her back at her side… For the first time in two weeks, Deanna felt something warm lighting up inside her.

Sam cleared his throat behind them.

“We’re kind of on a schedule here guys,” he said, eyes looking pointedly towards the flashing red lights on the wall. “And we’ve still got one person left to go.”

That succeeded in getting Deanna to detach herself from Cas.

“What does that mean?” she asked. Sam just started walking again. “Sam, please tell me you’re not talking about-“

“We aren’t leaving her here with him,” said Sam.

“Sam, listen to me,” Deanna said urgently as she followed behind him, knowing Cas would walk after them. “I’ve tried before okay? You think I haven’t? Besides, you can’t do anything about it. The only people who can are me and Dad, and I’m not making her do anything if I can help it.”

“We’re not leaving without her,” said Sam.

“Sam, she doesn’t want to go!” Deanna yelled, before remembering they were supposed to be quiet, and she had almost definitely just alerted someone to their escape in progress. “Shit, shit. We have to leave now.”

Sam just kept walking in the same direction. Deanna felt that same helpless feeling she’d always felt when her father decided something, and she just couldn’t change his mind.

‘I could carry him out,’ Cas offered, within her head. Deanna almost smiled.

‘Not gonna happen,’ she thought back. ‘He’ll figure it out for himself. I just wish he didn’t have to.’

It wasn’t hard to find Mary Winchester. The Men of Letters thought they were under attack, which meant that Mary would be close to their father’s side and their father would be on his way or in the war room. That also meant that Sam hadn’t planned for a clean exit.

“Sam, what the hell is your plan here?” Deanna hissed at him as they entered the war room. Sam took out a kind of makeshift radio and tapped out a message in Morse code. Deanna heard the machine buzz in answer, a series of short and long vibrations. He nodded to himself and then marched right into the war room, a pistol at the ready and the safety off. “Jesus, Sammy.”

Deanna and Cas barely had time to follow him in before all of the doors closed. Sam made a dash for the stairs, and Cas tapped Deanna’s arm and had them at the top before he even reached the bottom. All the men and women in the room just stared at them in a kind of shock. Then some of them tried to spin into action, but Cas was like a whirlwind through the room, a touch sending every person except Mary and John into a deep sleep. A moment later she was back at Deanna’s side.

“They’re fine,” Cas said to Sam, who looked a little stunned at what he’d just seen. “Just sleeping. I took the liberty of healing Margaret Sands’ arm. I was assuming she’d prefer it not be broken.”

“You did good, Cas,” said Deanna reassuringly. Cas looked at Sam a little hopefully, but he just shook himself and turned his focus back to their parents.

“Deanna, what the hell are you and your brother doing?” John asked, and Deanna felt herself reach out for Cas’ hand, grip tight. “These attacks on our perimeters and the doors, is that you?”

“Nothing you can’t fix,” Sam said, gun pointed up, but his safety still off. “And you’ve got worse to worry about than an ex-legacy and a harmless monster going missing.”

“That thing is not harmless,” said John, looking up toward Cas with a mixture of terror and hatred, and Deanna knew instantly that John had figured it out. That thing she wasn’t supposed to think about, he had put it all together. She stepped in front of Cas as though to shield her from view and her father sighed at her in disappointment.

“Either way, you’re going to let us go,” said Sam. “And you’re going to let mom go, too.”

“This ain’t the way you think it is, son,” John said quietly.

Sam pointed the gun at his father, and Deanna felt her heart breaking in two. She wanted to step between them, she wanted to say something to make things right. And it was Mary Winchester who did it in her stead.

Mary stood in front of John much the same way that Deanna stood in front of Cas. Her hands were raised in front of her in surrender and Sam seemed to lower his gun on instinct more than anything else.

“He doesn’t have anyone else,” Mary said to the now silent Sam. “I’m staying here Sam. I’m sorry. I love you all, you have to know that.”

One of the people Cas had knocked out started to stir, and Deanna looked between her brother and her parents. They didn’t have long before someone tried something, and Cas, impressive though she was, probably wouldn’t be able to pull that same trick twice in so little time.

“Sammy, we need to go,” Deanna called down to him. That was enough to spring him into action and he raced up the stairs towards the door, tapping out another message in his little radio. John ran behind him, and Deanna felt dread spread through her because he was not chasing Sam. John cared about his children, but Deanna knew his priorities lay in stopping evil, and Cas was…

Deanna ran full tilt toward the entrance of the garage, where she knew someone will have dragged her dad’s old car from where she’d left it outside the motel she and Cas had been staying at. She got in, apologized under her breath as she hot-wired her own damn car, and drove through the wooden doors in her way to get out.

Driving back toward Sam and Cas, who were engaged in what looked to be preventing some kind of spell, Deanna caught sight of her father and the bright red color of blood on his palm. He drew a symbol on the wall and pressed his hand down.

Cas was blasted back a hundred feet, smashing an ugly SUV that had no business being parked in the middle of nowhere. Deanna pulled up to where Sam was standing, looking on at the scene.

“My car,” he said, before opening the door and sliding into the passenger side of the Impala, easy as anything.

“Cas does good work,” Deanna muttered, earning a glare from her brother. “Ugly fucking car, Sammy.”

“You sure seem fine,” said Sam bitterly, as Deanna stomped on the accelerator so they could get to Cas and get the hell out of dodge before her father tried again and got the sigil right. “Considering mom-“

“I’m never fine, Sam,” said Deanna, slamming on the brakes to a dead stop next to Cas. “Mom can’t… Mom doesn’t see what dad is to her. She can’t change the way she feels from the day she died. Can’t evolve. It isn’t her fault.”

“And you’re okay with leaving it at that?” Sam asked her. Deanna didn’t bother giving that stupid question an answer and instead turned her attention to the second most irritating person she had to remind herself she loved.

“Cas, get in the fucking car.”

Cas had of course noticed that Sam was sitting shotgun, and crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at Deanna. ‘Jesus Christ, this isn’t a god damn hierarchy, Cas, just get in the fucking car,’ Deanna thought at her. Cas jutted up her chin.

Deanna started driving away. Five seconds later a slight displacement of air announced Cas’ presence in the backseat, sulking. Deanna reached back a second to squeeze her knee and Cas subsequently seemed to soften in her opinion towards Sam sitting in the front seat and remembered her strange quest to win Sam’s approval, and dear God, there was too much dysfunction in Deanna’s life to deal with all at once.

“And what the hell was that Dad used on Cas,” said Sam next. “Because I’ve never seen that before.”

“Banishing sigil. He drew it wrong, lucky for us,” said Deanna, hoping somehow Sam wouldn’t ask the next logical question.

“Banishing sigil for what?” he asked, brows furrowed in confusion.

“What do you think?” Deanna asked, the careful avoidance in her head breaking down and the answer flashing across her mind. She could see Cas stiffen in the rearview mirror behind her and almost simultaneously Sam let out a surprised hiss of realization.

“That’s impossible.”

“Apparently not.”

“Deanna,” Sam said insistently, looking back at Cas a moment and then seeming to decide he didn’t really care about her feelings. “There are no more angels. There haven’t been for centuries.”

“Dad seemed to think it was a good guess,” said Deanna. Sam glanced back warily at Cas in the backseat, and Cas’ mind spun a series of stranger colors as she came to terms with what she knew this meant. “And he won’t be shy about sharing it. Cas is going to have a price on her head.”

Sam understood immediately.

“Where are we going?” he asked Deanna as she turned onto the main highway and aimed North.

“Someplace safe.”

She could make the drive to Sioux Falls in less than four hours if she let Cas play mind tricks on any cops they passed. Once they were safe she could deal with everything else. Sam pulled out his phone to tell his friend to drive North and he’d let her know where they were when they stopped. He got a text message back, and seemed satisfied with the response. Deanna just kept driving, and the three of them stewed in tense silence.


	7. Chapter 7

Sam should have known Deanna would take them to Bobby Singer’s junkyard. Bobby was something of an unofficial conduit between the hunting community and the Men of Letters, and one of few trusted deeply by both communities. But more than that, he was uncle Bobby to a lot of the kids who grew up in the Men of Letters or around their hunting parents. And he had always been especially close to Deanna and Sam.

Everyone loved hearing his old hunting stories, but Deanna had asked to hear them again and again when she was younger. Sam had listened with some interest, but he’d always been more interested in what Bobby had to say about languages and mythology. He’d never discouraged their interests, and had always been quick to insist they should do ‘kid shit’ and went out to buy them ice cream or let them loose at the park when they were younger and supposed to be studying. Those were some of the best memories Sam had, and he could feel them rushing back as they pulled into the junkyard. He hadn’t seen uncle Bobby in a long time.

His dad and Bobby had had a falling out that Sam now suspected had something to do with him finding out about Mary Winchester’s death and subsequent pseudo-resurrection. Either that, or Bobby was still holding a grudge for a dangerous hunt or two the Men of Letters had sent a hunter on, because Sam knew those weren’t few and far between and their was a tendency to outsource the research at the Men of Letters to the newbies. That was one reason why every hunter worth their salt did their own damn research.

Deanna pulled the car to a stop and got out without a word to Sam or Cas. There was a fluttering sound and then Cas was sitting on the front door step to Bobby’s house looking up at Deanna as though daring her to comment on it.

“You hate doors that much, Cas?” Deanna asked her.

“I’m a being beyond the constraints of time and space,” said Cas. “I have no opinion, negative or positive on doors.”

“Don’t mind her, she doesn’t like small spaces,” Deanna muttered to Sam.

“I can hear you,” Cas called out too loudly.

Sam was suddenly having a much easier time believing that the two of them were married. He ignored the bickering that ensued between them to text Eileen where they were and asked her to meet up with them as long as she was sure there was no one on her tail.

“If you two don’t shut the hell up, see if I let you stay the night,” yelled a voice from behind the door of Bobby’s house. Next moment the door slammed open, and Bobby wheeled his way forward and stopped next to Cas who looked up at him balefully. Sam saw Deanna roll her eyes at that. “Deanna, be nicer to your wife.”

“I am nice to Cas,” Deanna insisted. Sam watched as they fell into a little dispute about that, and how friendly it all was underneath the veneer of hostility. Like it was an act they put up every time and was more a form of good natured ribbing than actual bickering. It was about a minute of this before Bobby rolled his wheelchair forward a little more and caught sight of Sam.

“If it isn’t the second Winchester,” Bobby said. He almost smiled in that gruff way of his. “Deanna finally called you up. Took her long enough.”

“It’s good to see you, Bobby,” Sam said, looking away from Deanna and not doing a thing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. Bobby picked up on it instantly and let out a little huff of chagrin.

“You kids in trouble?” Bobby asked next, picking up on the slight tension between all three of them. Deanna nodded.

“We figured out what Cas is,” said Deanna. “And no one’s gonna like it.”

Bobby’s face grew harder, and he nodded before gesturing each of them inside. Deanna and Cas walked in like they were familiar with it. Sam had nothing but childhood memories to guide him, and he somehow felt left out from whatever relationship Deanna and Cas seemed to have with Bobby now. Cas in particular was the subject of some barked orders about hanging her coat up and having something to eat, damnit. Sam was surprised at the fondness and the underlying worry in Bobby’s eyes about Cas.

“You knew,” Cas said when Bobby asked how they had found out. Bobby nodded a little, and the protective way he looked at Cas was almost fatherly. Sam could only frown to himself and wonder what exactly he had missed in the relatively short amount of time (in this reality at least) that Deanna and Cas had even known each other. Because Cas looked at Bobby with something she’d been sorely lacking in any other interaction Sam had ever seen her in, and that was respect. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Some secrets are best kept,” Bobby told her. “And angels aren’t welcome on Earth. Your kind got annihilated a long while back. All we have now are stories and old whispers and passages from old books. You as a mystery monster? Tolerable. But put a name to a face and, well…”

“She becomes a target,” Deanna said quietly. Sam watched Cas’ face carefully for some sign of acknowledgment of this, but it suddenly seemed cast in stone. Otherworldly. Exasperation, boredom, eagerness, and even peace had all been emotions he’d been able to read easily from her face before, but now he might as well have been looking at a statue. It was Deanna’s expression that crackled with sympathy and the shadow of pain, as she took hold of Cas’ hand. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

“Do you really think it’s just me?” Cas asked Bobby after a moment. “No one else… the others like me, they didn’t…”

“No,” Bobby said, like ripping off a bandaid. Cas nodded at him tightly. Bobby wheeled over to where Sam was and gestured him towards the kitchen so they could give Cas and Deanna a moment of privacy. Sam was glad, because it gave him a chance to talk with Bobby and figure out how the hell he felt about all of this.

“You trust her?” Sam asked Bobby as soon as they were alone. Bobby looked up at him, something like trepidation in his eyes.

“Yeah, kid, I do,” he said without hesitation. “That girl’s done wonders for your sister. You didn’t see her when Charlie went missing. She had the look about her that dead hunters do.”

“Yeah, but that’s my point Bobby,” said Sam in an urgent whisper. “You know what Cas is. And if you know how she and Deanna met, you know that Deanna didn’t just say yes to whatever weird binding spell Cas has. How much of what Deanna is saying is Deanna?”

“You think Cas would let Deanna talk to her that way if that was the case?” Bobby asked. “Besides, Cas ain’t half bad herself. You’d see that if you give her a chance. ‘Sides, Deanna’s said the cleansing spell in front of me about twenty times since then. Hunter’s hallmark.”

“I know it is,” said Sam.

“Yeah, and Cas has said it too,” Bobby continued. “Means that body’s hers, however the hell she pulled that off. No possessing forces, technically.”

Sam sighed and looked back toward the living room.

“She’s just not… she’s not Deanna’s type.”

Bobby’s expression changed.

“Be careful, what you’re saying now, boy,” he said. “Folks come in all kinds.”

“That’s not what I-“ Sam said, shaking his head quickly. “Look, I didn’t know about that before, but that’s not what I mean. Deanna hates monsters. She always has. And since when is she okay with settling down with one person like this? It just doesn’t add up, that’s all I’m saying.”

Bobby relaxed after hearing that.

“Well, maybe Deanna changed,” said Bobby. “Or maybe you didn’t know her as well as you thought you did.”

Sam did wonder at that. All these secrets Deanna had been keeping from him, when he’d always thought she was a pretty open and shut book. Not in a bad way, it was just it had always seemed like Deanna knew what she wanted, found a way to get it, and then moved onto the next thing.

“What if she gets hurt?” asked Sam, and finally Bobby’s expression softened towards him. He nodded a little and reached up to pat Sam on the shoulder.

“Deanna’s been hurt. I think she’s trying to do the fixing now, and Cas is a part of that for her,” said Bobby. “I think you’re a part of that for her too. But you focus on your own shit for the moment. I’m gonna assume Deanna told you everything.”

“Yeah,” said Sam.

“You got a look about ya,” Bobby said sadly. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Yeah, well,” said Sam, trying to ignore the simmering anger that was never far from the surface now. “It would’ve been nice to know, considering everyone else did.”

“Your sister was trying to protect you.”

“Don’t take her side. I deserved to know,” said Sam, glaring down at Bobby now. The man crossed his arms and looked up at Sam, not even a hint of intimidation in his expression.

“Yeah, you did,” he said. “But does being right make you feel better? It don’t change the past, and it don’t help fix what’s wrong now. I remember you two used to be thick as thieves, and I know there’s a part of you that wants to find that again. Get angry if you need to kid, but don’t forget as misguided as it may have been, everything Deanna ever did for you was out of love.”

Sam grit his teeth but nodded. He’d take it into consideration, but forgiveness wasn’t going to come quick, and he honestly didn’t think it should. There was more than a lifetime’s worth of awful to go through, and maybe he and Deanna would be okay again someday.

“How are you doing, kid?” Bobby asked next. “It’s been a long damn time.”

“I’ve been better,” Sam said. “I mean, a few days ago, I thought my mom was still alive, I hadn’t screwed everything up with my best friend, and I still thought Deanna was a problem we could fix and not just the new normal.”

“You wanna talk about any of that?” asked Bobby. “I can’t promise a sympathetic ear, but I can promise an ear.”

“Not really.”

Sam took a deep breath and let it out.

“Listen, Bobby, I got a friend coming. Her name’s Eileen, and she’s deaf, so make sure you talk a little slower so she can read your lips. Or if you know how to sign, that would be great. Tell her I’ll be around in a while.”

“And where the hell are you going?” Bobby asked suspiciously.

“Out for a walk. I need to just get away for a bit. I’ll be back,” said Sam. He left the kitchen after he heard Bobby’s hesitant grunt of approval, and then marched back through the living room toward the door. In his peripheral vision, he saw Deanna startle a little from where she had been holding Cas and talking softly to her. Sam slammed the door shut behind him and figured that Deanna could make of that what she would.

For a second he just stood there in front of the door. The junkyard stretched around him, and he picked a direction and just started walking. After half an hour or so of wandering, he reached the edge. Once he was there he sat himself down, and ignored the cold from the ground that started seeping into his bones.

He didn’t know how long he sat out there before someone came to find him. He’d expected it to be maybe Eileen or Deanna. Instead when someone laid a hand on his shoulder he turned around and saw bright blue eyes staring down at him.

“Can I sit with you?” Cas asked. Sam shrugged and Cas sat down next to him.

“Deanna send you to spy on me?” asked Sam, pulling his legs up to his chest and shivering a little in the cold. “I know you two have your weird mind thing.”

Cas looked sideways at him and then out at the empty field in front of them.

“I can make this conversation private if you prefer. Deanna will probably still ask me about it later, though,” said Cas. “She’s worried about you.”

“So what?”

Cas frowned and kept quiet for a while.

“I can understand a little, what you might be going through,” said Cas, the words slicing through the silence. Sam didn’t acknowledge them. “To find out someone you might call family, anyone you might call family are just gone… I can understand a fraction. I don’t expect that to ease your pain. Someone understanding, I mean. I don’t think it will ease mine. But when you have a moment of peace, Sam, try for forgiveness. You can’t heal wounds you keep cutting open.”

Sam had turned to look at Cas now, though he still hadn’t deigned to speak a polite word to her. Perhaps he vaguely felt guilty about that, but it was hard to see through everything else. Anger, sadness, and yes, pain.

“I was worshipped once, in my time as goddess of the hunt,” Cas said next. “Then I spent my days walking the Earth, but walking above it all. Like it was beneath me. Like an unlearned language, something to be appreciated perhaps, but not understood. I rejected being confined to physical form and I asked my closest friend again and again to be let back into the ether, until he confined me to even smaller point of existence. I began to have empathy there, as I was forced to listen to the prayers of my people, hear their despairs as they grew and died. I knew the strangeness of a power in deciding which I answered and which I didn’t and then the helplessness of having all will taken from me. But none of that compared to meeting Deanna. She is what starlight is made of, and I find myself anxious when she is not happy.”

“And your point is…?” Sam asked, trying at once to conceive anyone who had been alive for so long, and what that must do to their perspective and focus on whatever message Cas was trying to convey.

“My point is your reconciliation may be beyond my ability to help, but if you could stow your crap for the moment and talk to each other, I would appreciate it,” said Cas. “And also that I would like your friendship, someday, if you can manage it.”

“I don’t know if I can trust you,” said Sam. “We know what you are now, Cas, and angels don’t have a history of helping humans. Your kind tried to wipe us out. I’m not saying you’re like that, but you can’t remember what you were like before. I don’t know that you won’t hurt her someday.”

Cas gracefully stood up.

“As I said. If you can manage it,” she said, before walking away. Sam watched her go, and after a few more moments of staring at nothing, stood up himself and walked back towards Bobby’s house.


	8. Chapter 8

Eileen Leahy had arrived a little after Cas went off to go talk to Sam, something Deanna had tried and failed to talk her out of. Bobby had relayed Sam’s instructions to her so he could start cooking up some kind of soup to feed them all, and Deanna had answered the door not quite knowing what to expect.

The hunter she met had the stance of someone who’d been through more than a few hard times, but within a minute of conversation, Deanna knew she liked her. Eileen was sarcastic, kind, and wary all at the same time, and she didn’t treat Deanna like she was crazy, which was better than other hunters she’d met after they figured out her wife wasn’t quite human.

“So how did you and Sam meet?” Deanna asked, looking towards the door and still not seeing anyone there. She doubted this conversation would last long once Sam was back, and she was curious about what her brother had been getting up to after he left Stanford. The last time she’d snuck off to spy on him, he’d still seemed pretty happy there. He’d been halfway through law school, and on track to a very different sort of life than the one she had been on.

“Case,” said Eileen. “I saved him and he came looking for me afterwords. We started working together, and we didn’t really stop.”

“And when you say together, do you mean the two of you are… together?” Deanna asked next. For a moment Eileen looked like a deer in headlights. Her face scrunched up slightly and one shoulder made an aborted half shrug.

“He doesn’t think about me like that,” she said. Deanna noticed she didn’t try to clarify the reverse. “I’m his friend.”

It was at this moment that Cas appeared suddenly inside the house again. The slight rush of air was enough to get Eileen to pull out an iron knife, though she relaxed when Cas signed a quick C-A-S at her. Deanna watched as she sheathed the knife and approved of the hunter’s good reflexes. She was more than glad that her brother had had Eileen to look out for him when he’d gotten into hunting. The woman didn’t seem to be short on issues, but then again, no hunters managed to live a life without any of those.

In one of her few secret spying missions after Sam had gone off on his own, Deanna had met Sam’s ex-girlfriend, Jess. She’d tailed the girl to some kitschy coffee place and pretended to trip next to her table. Jess had immediately offered to buy her a new coffee for accidentally tripping her, and Deanna had spent the next half hour enjoying a decent conversation with her. She’d passed every test Deanna could throw at her regarding her status as human, and had spent no small time bragging about her boyfriend’s LSAT score and smiling about their plans to rent an apartment together for grad school. She had been nice, and Deanna wondered sometimes what had happened between her and Sam.

Eileen was someone entirely different. Deanna wouldn’t have had to be told that this woman was a hunter to guess. She appraised her surroundings constantly, wouldn’t sit with her back to a door, and occasionally touched her holster or knife sheath to ensure they were still there. Deanna sat back and watched as Cas and Eileen signed back and forth, paying attention to the loose translations Cas provided within her head to learn they were discussing Cas’ teleportation thing.

It was about five minutes later when Sam trudged his way in, being sure to slam the door behind him. He’d always pulled the same kind of stunt when he was a kid and didn’t get his way, and Deanna was half tempted to mention this to him. Then again, Sam stopped trying to show everyone just how displeased he was with everything when he saw Eileen was there.

Eileen looked up and smiled at him and Sam gave a little half nod and smile back, but there was something awkward hanging in the air between them. They were clearly very familiar with each other, but they wouldn’t quite meet the other’s eyes.

“So this is fun,” said Deanna. Cas signed what she said so Eileen would understand why Sam had started glaring at Deanna. “What?”

“Leave it alone,” said Sam. Deanna heeded the warning and went back to leaning back on the couch and hoping that Bobby would come along soon and break up the silence that had infected the room.

A memory lingered in Deanna’s head of Sam at the age of thirteen asking Deanna for advice on how to get a girl to kiss him. She’d had an idea that Dad wouldn’t exactly be happy that Sam’s first ever crush was a kitsune named Amy, but that hadn’t stopped her from giving Sam a few pointers.

It had been almost funny, Sam’s dating tendencies in his teens. First there had been Amy, and then Madison the werewolf, and then Lenore the vampire. Every time Dad kicked up a fuss and every time Sam would tell him he was being an ass and that they were people too. And Deanna, she had stayed out of it as best as she could, but Sam had known back then that her opinion was closer to their father’s than Sam’s. The irony wasn’t lost on her that when she’d finally honest to God fallen in love with someone, it had been everything she’d been taught to fear and reject.

That being said… Deanna remembered sometimes that when she’d daydreamed about what it would be like to be married, unlikely as she found the idea with the parody of her parent’s marriage having made wounds so deep, sometimes she wasn’t sure they would ever close. She’d kept her small fantasies simple, just someone she was comfortable with. Someone who thought the little things were enough, and didn't hold it against her when she couldn’t manage being a functional human being. Takeout dinners, old movies, a warm smile.

It just so happened that Cas was more than anything Deanna would have thought to wish for.

Bobby rolled into the living room and told them all to eat something. After a rushed dinner of stew that everyone ate quietly, Bobby cleaned up and then dropped three books on the table.

“I thought y’all might figure it out someday,” said Bobby. “And I’ve been looking into some answers for you, if you want them. Bigger issue, Cas, is gonna be that hunters might not have the shit on hand they need to kill angels, but it’s pretty well documented how exactly that needs to be done, so it won’t be long until just about every hunter has something that can be used against angels if someone gets a witch hunt up and going for you.”

“Well, if she was a witch I’d let the mob get her,” said Deanna. Cas rolled her eyes.

“We have friends who are witches, Deanna,” Cas chided. “I seem to remember Rowena saving you from more than one curse while we were in Oz.”

“Rowena is not our friend. She was only our ally because she wanted to murder the witch of the west,” said Deanna back. “And she only healed me because you’re scary.”

“That is a very good reason,” said Cas. “I would have been very unpleasant to everyone if you had continued to be in pain.”

“Why didn’t you fix it?” Sam asked before Deanna could respond to Cas. Cas looked at him for a moment, trying to gauge if he was actually interested.

“Magic plays by its own rules,” Cas said. “It’s older than even the old Gods, and does not like to bend to us- I mean, to them. And me as well.”

Deanna could see Sam filing that away in the back of his head. She didn’t much like thinking about what he might try to do with it.

“The most recent sighting of an angel, besides Cas here, was in fifteenth century Spain,” Bobby continued, Sam’s curiosity seemingly satisfied. He read from a passage of a book, loosely translated from Spanish in a way that added a sense of romance to the events described. But Deanna could feel through Cas the sense of wrongness in it, and knew it was a glamorized version of something much bloodier. “And the archangel, Raphael, surrendered his grace unto the city of Cordoba, promising his protection.”

“That doesn’t sound like an angel,” said Sam.

“Yeah, which is why it’s usually discredited despite the sourcing being decent enough,” said Bobby. Pulling out a shitty photocopy of an old news article, he pointed to another passage, seemingly by memory. “But I did some research into it, and there’s something to it. He’s still seen as the custodian of the city by normal folk. And there has been a series of miracles in Cordoba, one every hundred years or so. Last one was in 1917, when a local woman was cured of cancer after praying in the cathedral there.”

“So he might still be alive?” asked Cas. Bobby shook his head.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “As far as I can tell from the accounts I’ve read, grace is what makes an angel an angel. Take that out, you’ve got yourself a dead chicken. What I think is happening is that his batteries kept going after the chicken lost his head, and they’ll react to any outpouring of faith that’s big enough. The real deep kind that only desperate people have.”

“So, we go to Spain,” said Cas. Deanna gave her a wary look. It wasn’t that she didn’t want answers for Cas, or that she didn’t want to help her through this newfound identity crisis (being downgraded from a forgotten god to a species of one was hitting her hard). It was just that for some reason chasing after this was ringing a million alarm bells in Deanna’ head.

“Are we sure that’s a good idea-“

“It’ll get us out of reach of any hunters Dad sends after Cas,” Sam pointed out. Which was true, unfortunately. “No one’s buying a plane ticket to gank anything that isn’t an active threat.”

“I guess,” Deanna said. She noticed Sam giving her an odd look, and braced herself.

“You got a better idea?”

“I guess I’m just thinking I can deal with hunters, if I need to. We don’t know what the fuck is going on with this Raphael guy, and I don’t think poking Cas’ past with a stick is the best idea on the table.”

“Maybe Cas has a right to make that kind of decision for herself,” said Sam. “I know I would’ve liked at least the chance to know what was going on with Mom.”

“Did you?” asked Deanna. “Sorry, I guess I figured when you fucked off on your own you weren’t all that interested in any of us anymore.”

“I came back. You didn’t,” said Sam, narrowing his eyes at her.

“You never even said goodbye to me,” said Deanna, instead of letting him get the upper hand for even a second. Because the moment she did, it would be over and they would be back to square one. Make the world a little more comfortable for Sammy. “You just left me alone with them. How well do you think Dad took that? You have no idea-“

“No, I don’t, because you never let me have any idea about any of it,” said Sam. “You had a million chances to tell me what was really going on, and you never did. I could have helped, okay? You just needed to talk to me once.”

“You were a kid, Sam.”

“So were you,” Sam pointed out, and some of the anger started going out of his voice at that, and Deanna didn’t much like the change. She didn’t need his pity. In fact, she’d thrown more than enough pity parties all on her own, thank you very much.

“Yeah, well, that’s life sometimes,” said Deanna. “Didn’t mean I needed to drag you down with me.”

Sam sighed and fixed his eyes on some spot on the wall, arms crossed.

“I don’t want to fight,” he said after a second. “But I don’t know how to forgive you for this. I don’t know if I can.”

Deanna felt her throat tighten up at that. She swallowed down the feeling.

“Okay,” she said after a second. She turned to look at Cas, who had been watching the entire conversation with a wary kind of interest. “You really wanna go look into this Raphael thing?”

“I have to know,” Cas said quietly. Deanna nodded and tried to bury her misgivings. She didn’t even know why she had such a feeling of wrong in her gut, and chances were they wouldn’t find anything anyone. But if they did, and if that could give Cas a measure of peace, well, that would be something at least.

“I guess I’m outvoted,” Deanna said. “Unless Eileen was thinking of taking up my cause?”

“I’d prefer to abstain,” Eileen said in response, signing along as she spoke. Sam signed something to her back, and she responded to him quickly. Cas supplied to Deanna after a moment of prompting that Sam had asked if her if she had been able to understand everything they’d said and Eileen had signed back the equivalent of more or less.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Bobby, drawing Deanna’s attention back to the matter at hand. “First things first, y’all are gonna need something to defend yourselves with. I am almost certain Raphael is dead, but you don’t take chances with an archangel. First step, is gear up and then we’ll start looking into exactly where you might find some answers.”

Deanna didn’t have to guess what that meant. Research and more research and still even more research until Bobby was satisfied they weren’t going into this half-cocked. Oh joy.


	9. Chapter 9

The city of Cordoba was crowded and hot in late July, leaving little room to weave between the tourist groups and the locals in the narrow streets. More than once, they had taken a wrong turn and ended up staring down another dead end before turning around and trying again to find the cathedral they were looking for. Sam was feeling irritable and snapped at Deanna more than once while she was surveying the map and pointing them in a new direction.

Cas had offered to go investigate herself, but Deanna had insisted they were going to be looking into this the human way and asked Cas not use her abilities until they knew it was safe. That was one of the reasons Deanna had agreed to actually get on a plane to get to Spain, aside from Sam having no confidence in Cas’ timid acknowledgment that she hadn’t ever flown across a sea before, and didn’t know if it would be in violation of the curse Hera had placed on her to walk the Earth. Even Deanna had admitted it was probably a bad idea to test that, loathe as she was to get on a plane.

“Aren’t the Men of Letters here gonna get pissy that we didn’t officially log our visit?” Deanna asked as they walked down yet another street.

“If they find out,” said Sam. He saw Eileen get distracted by someone trying to sell her something. She shook her head at the man before trying to push past him, and Sam stood back a moment so he could take hold of her hand as they stepped through the crowded plaza. He didn’t immediately think about how that might add to the awkwardness that had grown between them, and when he started to he was reassured when Eileen gently squeezed his hand.

“We should’ve. Dad would know where we were, but he’s gonna find out anyway if we get caught here,” Deanna pointed out, continuing their conversation oblivious to Sam’s distraction. “And chances are dicey that we’re going to get any help from the MoL branch out here if we set something off. They’re big on registering hunters, and making sure out of towners sign in.”

“And if they found out what Cas was?” Sam asked. “We’ve been over this Deanna. Three times today, actually. Why are you so goddamn antsy?”

“I’m fine,” Deanna muttered leading them into a right turn. When Sam saw another dead end he let out a groan and snatched the map from her.

“My turn,” he said. Deanna tried to grab it back, and Sam lifted the paper over his head.

“Okay, that just isn’t fair,” said Deanna, glaring at him. Up at him, specifically, since he was almost a foot taller than she was, and there was no way she was going to be able to get the map back. It didn’t stop her from trying, however, and Cas pulled her back when people started noticing her and Sam’s squabble over it.

“What’s going on?” Cas asked Deanna, who avoided her eyes. “Deanna, you’ve been leading us in circles all morning.”

That brought Sam up short.

“Wait, what?” Sam said. “We’ve been walking for three hours through hundred degree heat on purpose?”

Deanna was staring down at her feet.

“I don’t know, okay?” she said to Cas. “I just have a really bad feeling. Like if we go, everything’s going to go wrong.”

Cas reached out to put a hand on Deanna’s cheek. Sam watched as his sister slowly looked up at her wife.

“It’s going to be okay. I promise,” Cas said. She leaned in and kissed Deanna, a peck on the lips and then on the forehead, standing on her toes to do so. Deanna spared a small smile at that, some of her anxious restlessness seeming to fade, if only a little. Cas looked up at Sam and caught him watching the two of them curiously, and then nodded her head towards the map in his hands. “Lead the way.”

Sam looked down at the map, figured out where they were and then broke out in the correct direction. It was only another half an hour of walking before they finally came upon the cathedral. The size of it was incredible, and Sam felt humbled in its presence despite himself.

Once inside, they realized quickly they weren’t going to be wandering off from the group to snoop around on their own, so they followed the group from place to place, all the while waiting for Cas to say something. Sam could see she was reaching out for something from her expression, but she wasn’t finding it.

They finished the tour having found nothing, and quiet disappointment was evident on Cas’ face.

“I can feel something here,” she said at last. “But it is in the city itself, not the cathedral. And it’s hard to pinpoint. There is no one location, only the potential of arising at any location and a strong pull to the Cathedral as the last point of manifestation. If I didn’t know what to look for, I wouldn’t notice it at all.”

It was hard not to see the sheer relief on Deanna’s face when she heard this. Sam frowned at his sister, wondering if this was all the result of a gut feeling, or if something else was going on here.

“I think we’re in the right place,” Sam said. “We don’t have to go inside again, but listen to me Cas. Stop focusing on finding Raphael. Instead focus on something you want, and pray for it. That’s what worked for that woman in 1917.”

Cas closed her eyes, and started to do so. Sam watched Deanna’s face as that discomfort returned. He could see her shifting from foot to foot, almost as though she wanted to take off running but didn’t know why. She was staring at Cas as though she were trying to figure out some way to derail what was happening, but before she seemed to be able to come up with a plan, Cas’ eyes opened and light shone out of them. It was a brief moment only, and her eyes snapped shut the next second after which an almost imperceptible pulse came off of her.

It seemed as though they were in Cordoba one moment, and then by the ocean the next. Sam peered around in confusion, glad to see that Eileen, Deanna, and Cas were still surrounding him, even though the crowded streets of Cordoba had been replaced by a sandy beach.

“Where are we?” Sam asked. Cas opened her eyes again and looked around.

“Bermuda,” she said after a moment. Her eyes flicked up and focused on something in the distance.

“Why did you take us here?” asked Sam next. Cas just kept staring at one of the people on the beach a long ways from them. “Cas?”

“I didn’t,” she said. “I asked Raphael if any of my brothers and sisters were left alive to bring them to me.”

Sam’s blood ran cold. Cas was one thing. She was at the very least a known quantity in that she loved Deanna and she wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize that. Any other angel and all bets were off.

“Remember that friend I’ve been telling you about,” Cas said quietly, and Deanna nodded, her eyes fixed on the same person that Cas was.

“I really don’t think we should be here,” said Deanna. “Cas-“

“I’m not leaving,” said Cas fiercely. She started walking forwards and Deanna stumbled after her, something very much like fear seeming to grip her. Sam exchanged a glance with Eileen, who shook her head and then signed at him.

‘We stay back. If they get in trouble, we can help them.’

‘Surprise attack?’

‘Exactly,’ Eileen signed with a tight smile. ‘You still have what we need? Just in case?’

Sam reached for his bag and found to his relief that the jar of holy oil that Bobby had ordered special was still there. He nodded.

‘Follow my lead,’ signed Eileen. She put on a bright sunny smile, took out her phone and started taking pictures of things, and then took Sam’s hand. Sam caught on quickly and pretended to ooh and ahh over her pictures while keeping a covert eye on Deanna and Cas. He and Eileen followed from a distance behind, doing their best to appear just like a couple on holiday while Deanna and Cas closed in on a sunbathing man in sunglasses and Hawaiian style swim trunks. Sam clocked some kind of mixed drink in one hand that was half empty and seemed to have bits of candy bars instead of fruit stuck on the toothpick. He didn’t look up until Cas had marched up to his feet.

Everything else happened so fast, Sam knew he couldn’t have changed it even if he and Eileen had chased after Cas and Deanna. The sunbathing man looked up, lowered his sunglasses, and then snapped his fingers. It felt as though Sam had blinked and they were gone, and he suddenly was possessed with the oddest feeling that they had never been there at all. He pushed it aside, dismissing it for the trickery it was.

‘What do we do now?’ he signed at Eileen, panic starting to grip him. Eileen frowned and then pulled out her cellphone. She tossed it to him.

‘We run up my phone bill,’ she signed back to him. ‘You get Bobby to tell you how to summon an angel. I’ll go to the gift shop and see what I can find.’

A plan in place helped Sam regain his composure instantly, and he dialed Bobby even as Eileen started walking off. With any luck, they would get both Cas and Deanna back no worse for wear. As far as Sam saw it, there was no other option.


	10. Chapter 10

The pleasant warmth of the sun over the beach in Bermuda changed in an instant, now beating down hard enough that it was hardly a few seconds before Deanna felt herself begin to sweat. A look around her verified that they had once again changed location with little to no warning, and all at the snap of Cas’ asshole friend’s fingers. Deanna reached out for Cas’ wrist, an instinct which seemed to be a good one, in case whoever the guy in the bright purple Hawaiian trunks and sunglasses decided he’d had enough of her. Cas had more than implied he didn’t have to much patience for humans.

“Aren’t you supposed be stuck in a rock?” the man asked Cas. There was no name for him in Cas’ head, or rather their were many names, and all of them false. Anansi, Crow, Maui, Loki. Names and faces stolen or borrowed from others, for a few centuries at a time. The only word that really rang true was a word in a language Deanna didn’t know, and whose closest English translation was ‘brother’. Perhaps it was Enochian, the language of angels. It was a language that generations of hunters had done their best to purge from the world. “I was going to let you stew for a few more decades, listening to preteen boys complain about Suzie from homeroom not paying them enough attention.”

Cas’ mind flashed a bright yellow, sheer anger overtaking her. Deanna couldn’t help letting it spread through her too, and within a second Cas’ brother had two women giving him nearly identical death glares. Perhaps they were hopelessly outmatched, but they still managed to make him flinch.

“A witch found me,” Castiel told him slowly. “And bound me to his will. I begged for your help, brother. And you left me there.”

His expression didn’t change, but Deanna could sense a changing in the desert air, almost as though it had thickened in the same way it did before a thunderstorm. She looked up to see a still blue sky and wondered where the hell they were anyway.

“I didn’t hear you. I got into some trouble and I’ve been laying low,” he said, and Deanna believed him even if she still hated him. “And the witch…”

“I killed him,” Cas said.

“You should have left him for me,” said the man. The whatever he was, Deanna means. Clearly not human. “I would have made it hurt. Men should know better than to bind gods.”

“I am not a god,” said Cas. “I know what I am. You can’t lie to me anymore.”

Deanna felt the heavy weight of amber eyes on her.

“Is that right?” he said. Although Deanna might have called his tone casual, there was no mistaking the threat. His eyes fell to her shoulder, where Deanna knew the binding spell was still inscribed into her very cells. And then, only moments later, she could feel extra pressure in her head like someone trying to pry it open and worm their way in.

“No,” Cas said simply, taking the pressure onto herself and sparing Deanna’s mind the examination. “She is not a part of this. And if you so much as touch her-“

“I’m fine, Cas,” Deanna said to her quickly, not wanting to escalate anything until they had a decent plan of getting away or winning. She knew instantly she had made a mistake, if the intense feeling of pain in her stomach was anything to go by. She doubled over, and had but to look at Cas to see that she was in intense pain as well. It subsided after a few moments.

“You can’t take her from me,” Cas said, a forced calm in her voice. “The binding spell changed when she took it on. You can’t remove it without our consent. And there is nowhere you can send her that my being would not be dragged in her wake.”

“She knows your name,” he said, sounding rattled. “Cassie, what the hell is this? Stockholm syndrome?”

“Humans prefer the term marriage, or so I’m told,” said Cas, her biting and ill-timed sense of humor kicking in. Deanna mentally snapped at her to calm the fuck down. “And I’m the one who asked her to look for my name. We found part of it.”

“Castiel,” he said after a moment. Then he added: “You know.”

Cas nodded slowly, but Deanna could feel the swirls of color changing rapidly as she took in her true name. The one that had been hidden from her. And with that thought, all of the pieces began to fall into place for Deanna. She knew who this was, at least vaguely, and she knew what had been done to Cas’ memories. The information had been there all along, but so had that nagging feeling not to figure it out. Cas’ mind stuttered to a stop as she read Deanna’s thoughts.

“Brother, huh?” Deanna said out loud, all sense of caution gone. “Interesting word to give her to remember. It’s the only one she believes. And if Cas is an angel, that would make you-“

A snap of the angel’s fingers, and Deanna found herself unable to speak. Her mouth kept moving, but no words came out. She wondered if this angel realized that Cas could hear everything she was thinking, that his secret was already lost and decided likely he didn’t. The side effects of binding an angel to a human would be unknown to anyone except them.

“An angel,” Cas finished for her. Deanna touched Cas arm lightly, and didn’t take offense when Cas shook her off. She wanted to feel this rage, and Deanna would let her. It wouldn’t help in the long run, but sometimes that wasn’t the point. “It was a possibility. I thought maybe Raphael had misunderstood, because if you were an angel, you would have told me who I was. You wouldn’t have left my past shrouded in mystery and told me only vague tales that you saved me by waking me from a long slumber.”

“An old God too long gone for even the old Gods to remember,” said the man flippantly, his eyes darkening. “C’mon, Cassie. It’s a good backstory. And it would have worked if you weren’t so stubbornly determined to do the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to. You got yourself cursed your first time off the bench. Hera still hasn’t forgiven you. You can’t even be stuck in rock correctly.”

‘He was trying to protect you,’ Deanna realized, then thought towards Cas. Cas didn’t much care.

“I remember you,” Cas said, teeth gritting as she struggled against the haziness of memories coming into being. The careful architecture keeping her from her past life was being haphazardly dismantled as she spoke, and Deanna urged her to make sure she didn’t hurt herself in the effort to remember. “Gabriel, the Messenger.”

“Not anymore,” he said. “And you aren’t Castiel anymore, either. There are no more angels.”

“You can’t take my name away from me,” said Cas fiercely. “I won’t let you.”

Gabriel snorted.

“Just like I thought. All those years and you still didn’t learn any fucking gratitude,” said Gabriel. “Do you want to know what would have happened if I hadn’t taken those memories from you? You’d be dead, just like everybody else. Sure, Raphael’s grace is still kicking, but he isn’t. It’s just you and me, and it’s all because of hunters like your dumb girlfriend.”

“Wife,” Castiel corrected. “My incredibly intelligent wife.”

Gabriel laughed in her face.

“Jesus Christ, and I mean that in the most blasphemous way possible,” said Gabriel. “If the angels were still around and they heard you say that, they wouldn’t kill you. They would eviscerate you. They’d invent brand new tortures to let you know just how fucked up falling for one of them is.”

“But you’re the one who told us,” Deanna said out loud, surprised to find her voice again. She guessed that Gabriel had been too distracted yelling at Cas to keep up whatever magic he’d stuck on her. “You told the nomads of the Arabic peninsula how to defend themselves against angels. Holy oil, sigils, the hunter’s creed. They spread the knowledge throughout their first empire, started the Men of Letters. It was all because of the archangel Gabriel.”

“Key word being ‘defend’, princess,” said Gabriel. “The heavenly host wanted to end the world, and I figured that sounded like a raw deal for you assholes. I didn’t really take into account what vicious little monsters humans could be. Defense, my ass. You started hunting us the same as all those creatures of the night you’re so scared of, and before long heaven was desperately fighting to the last man under Raphael’s say so. It took two hundred years, but eventually you killed every last one of us. Even old Raphael buckled eventually.”

“But you saved Cas,” Deanna said.

“Why?” Cas said next. Gabriel smiled at her cruelly.

“Maybe I just didn’t want to be alone,” he said. “And I figured no one would miss the fuck up angel who couldn’t even manage to kill children correctly in Egypt. You had more lamb’s blood on your hands at the end of that night than men’s.”

Deanna could feel the sudden stillness in Cas.

“But don’t get me wrong, Cassie. You still killed,” he said. “Do you want those memories back? I’m not even the one who took those ones from you, you’ve been rewritten so many damn times. But I can give it all back to you. Do you think your wife would look at you the same way if she knew everything you’d done?”

Castiel looked at Deanna a moment, and Deanna saw doubt in her eyes.

“Let me break the binding spell,” said Gabriel. “And everything can go back to the way it was. I’ll talk Hera into breaking her curse, and I’ll find you some other place to hide in the heavens. Your little friend can get back to her life. Trust me, Cassie. You’re putting her in danger every second you spend with her. And not just from me.”

Deanna started laughing. Gabriel and Castiel both turned to look at her in confusion, but she couldn’t quite make herself stop. It was so fucking ridiculous, the posturing and vague threats and the way Gabriel couldn’t quite hide how worried he was about Cas. The phrase ‘Trust me’ uttered with complete certainty that Cas would, and even more so the fact that Cas almost did. Almost.

“What’s funny?” Gabriel asked after Deanna hiccuped and finally managed to stop digging herself further into a hole.

“You,” said Deanna. “That might be the most convoluted way to tell someone you’re not good enough to date their sister I’ve ever heard, but hey as long as it’s effective. I have a little brother, dude, I know the feeling. Your first mistake was implying you gave a single fuck about my safety.”

Gabriel narrowed his eyes at her. Deanna was quicker to the punch than he was.

“You can shut me up again, if you like. Cas can still hear me,” said Deanna. “You can act like you don’t care about her all day long, but honestly? You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, and I’m the best liar I know. I don’t care why you picked Cas to survive. Thanks for that, anyway. But if you think for even a second I’m going to let you take her from me, you have another thing coming.”

Speaking of mistakes, angering an archangel was one Deanna likely wouldn’t make again. The attack on her mind this time was merciless, and Cas couldn’t protect her in time to keep Gabriel out. He raked through her memories, targeting the painful ones, and Deanna was vaguely aware she let out a pained scream before falling to her knees, Castiel quickly kneeling beside her.

“I get it now,” he said, with barely a smile. “Role model like that, no wonder you have to keep Cassie tied to your side.”

Oh look, here was a guy who knew how to go for the jugular.

“I am not like him,” said Deanna. “Cas loves me.”

“And mommy loves daddy, too,” said Gabriel in a sing song voice. “She loves him so much she won’t even leave him. No matter how much he hurts her.”

“I would never do that to Cas.”

“Then why won’t you break the binding spell?” Gabriel asked. Deanna looked away from him with a frown, never having thought of it quite like that. Breaking that meant Cas leaving, and Cas couldn’t leave. Dear God, did that sound as creepy and possessive as Gabriel was implying?

“At least I care about what she wants,” said Deanna. Gabriel rolled his eyes.

“People want shit they shouldn’t have all the time,” he said. “My job isn’t to keep her happy, it’s to keep her safe. Safe from all of you. Because you want to know what being on humanity’s side got me? It got my entire family killed, and you’re not taking her, too.”

“She’s not,” said Cas, breaking into the argument. “Ask me who I would pick Gabriel, and it’s her every time. You lied to me and left me helpless to the mercy of others. And I don’t forgive you.”

“Cassie-“

“I didn’t ask for your opinion on the matter,” said Castiel icily. “You’re not my brother.”

Gabriel looked like he had been slapped. Then his face hardened into a crafty expression Deanna didn’t like one bit.

“You’ll pick her every time, huh?” he asked quietly. “Let’s see about that.”

One second later Deanna could feel her mind going totally blank. She lashed out against the feeling but there was nothing she could do to stop it. She turned to look at Cas, only to find she was obviously experiencing the same thing. In that moment of terror, something silver appeared in Castiel’s hand. She looked down at it more in confusion than anything else, and it whizzed out of her fingers into Gabriel’s palm within a few moments anyway.

“Not that this little pinpricker could kill me anyway,” he said, with a smirk. “Take away the abandonment issues and the loneliness, and you’ve got two normally well adjusted grown ups that have to actually like each other for who you are. If things work out, I might even give you my blessing.”

Deanna vaguely wondered who the hell was talking, and where the hell she was. She looked at Cas, who didn’t seem to have any answers. She frowned suddenly and then hugged Deanna to her, tightly enough that Deanna couldn’t have escaped if she’d wanted to.

There was the feeling of a tug in the center of Deanna’s chest as soon as Cas touched her, and an annoyed look from the man that was glaring at them. She closed her eyes, feeling nauseous for a moment as the tugging sensation seemed to pull her back and the ground dropped out from under her. Then she was sitting in the middle of a circle of candles, a man and a woman staring down at her and letting out twin sighs of relief.

“Deanna, Cas, thank God you’re okay,” he muttered, reaching forward to help her up. She accepted the hand, if a little warily and then looked at the dark-haired woman who had just been holding her. Cas or Deanna apparently. She wasn’t sure which.

“Yeah, thank God,” she said after a second, not sounding entirely sure of herself. “I’m sorry, who are all of you?”


	11. Chapter 11

Arranging a flight back to the U.S. was a nightmare and a half, and only accomplished through Bobby contacting a few government officials that owed him favors. He was not happy when Sam called him, and between dealing with a grumpy retired hunter and his newly amnesiac sister and her amnesiac wife, Sam’s stress levels had gone through the roof.

Eileen had done her best to explain what they knew to Cas while Sam had taken Deanna, and neither conversation had gone all that well. Deanna’s natural suspicion and Cas’ philosophical meandering worked against them surprisingly efficiently, and Sam was happy that Deanna seemed not to remember how good she was with a weapon, considering how many different times she tried to find a hole in his story.

Eventually, he’d gotten the point across and that had been its own can of worms.

“So I chase down bad guys,” Deanna had said eventually. “And save people. Dude, that’s so awesome.”

“I can’t believe you expect me to believe I married someone that thinks homicide is a fun hobby,” Cas had said prissily at this, causing Deanna to glare at her.

“I can’t believe I married such a buzzkill,” said Deanna, seemingly having forgotten that her initial reaction to being told Cas was her wife was an exclamation about marrying up and a request for a high five from Eileen. “Angelic, my ass. Self-righteous is more like it. And does she have to bring up that she knows everything every two seconds? Insufferable little know it all.”

“You know I can hear you,” Cas had said, arms crossed petulantly. Sam was reminded instantly of their argument outside Benny’s house, but with all of the affection stripped away.

“Good,” Deanna said, proceeding afterwards to mutter under her breath. “What a fucking piece of work.”

“Both of you, shut up,” Sam said, sick of listening to them bicker. Instead of bringing an end to it all, he just re-centered their focus onto him.

“Aren’t I older than you?” Deanna asked. “Because that sounded an awful lot like a lack of respect, Samuel Middle Name Winchester.”

“I don’t have a middle name.”

“Or any manners,” Cas added coolly. Sam looked to Eileen for help, and she signed to him that he had brought this on himself. Sam then spent a miserable hour in the airport listening to passive aggressive comments, and he could not wait until they got their memories back and Deanna remembered that they were fighting. There was no point sniping at this Deanna, and he knew he would just regret it later anyway. At least she and Cas were too busy ganging up on him to fight with each other.

On the plane, Sam finally got a break from the two of them. He ended up sitting next to Eileen near the front of the plane while Deanna and Cas had seats towards the back. Sam walked back once to see Deanna closing her eyes and counting backwards from one thousand and felt a stab of guilt that he’d forgotten to remind her about her fear of flying. She was gripping onto the arm rest of the seat tight enough that her knuckles had gone white, and oddly enough Cas was staring at this. Slowly, she reached out and pried Deanna’s hand and then laced their fingers together. Deanna didn’t acknowledge it, and Sam was ushered back to his seat by an insistent flight attendant before he could ask them anything about it.

As soon as they landed, it was back to the bickering. Sam managed to snag the car keys, for once, since Deanna didn’t remember that she hated anyone and everyone that drove her car. The engine hummed beneath them as Cas sat in the passenger seat and looked out the window, as though arguing with Deanna was too insignificant for her to devote her entire attention to the matter.

Sam caught Eileen’s eyes in the rearview mirror and mouthed at her that she was lucky she didn’t have to listen to all of this. Eileen rolled her eyes at him and leaned forward to squeeze his shoulder in a show of solidarity.

“-you wanna get off that high horse for a damn second?” Deanna asked. “I don’t know where you get off calling me a murderer-“

“It is the name for people who murder things. I, being a thing, am rightfully concerned,” Cas said spitefully.

“No one said you were a thing,” said Deanna. “And according to Sam, here, you’re a hunter too.”

“He’s your brother,” said Cas. “How do I know this isn’t a trick? What if he’s trying to use me for personal gain?”

“I don’t know. How am I supposed to know it isn’t a trick that you planned? I don’t know any of you people.”

“Why would I try to trick you? If your brother is to be believed, I have near infinite power to use as I wish. What would be the point?”

“If the fact that we got hitched is anything to go by, it probably has something to do with me being cute,” said Deanna, clearly getting annoyed by Cas’ lack of any real engagement in the argument. “Check yes or no, do you think I’m pretty, Cas?”

“I think you’re a nuisance.”

“Uh huh,” said Deanna leaning forward and placing her hand so it was resting on the back of Cas’ seat. Her fingers started tapping lightly against the leather, just enough to be audible. Sam sighed. He knew this game.

“Don’t touch me,” Cas said, still staring resolutely out the window.

“I’m not touching you,” said Deanna smugly. She then leaned forward even more and started fiddling with the radio, dialing in to several rock stations seemingly by memory and then cycling through them again. Before Sam could do more than just frown at this, Cas had reached out to stop Deanna’s hands.

“Don’t touch me,” Deanna mocked with an obnoxious grin. Cas yanked Deanna forward a little, dragging her closer so Deanna could witness the full strength of Cas’ glare, but all that did was make Deanna smile all the harder. “Now that I’ve got your full attention, about that question. Check yes or no, do you-“

Cas let her go with a light push sending Deanna back into her seat. Then, she went back to staring out the window, now silently. Deanna just smirked to herself, convinced she had won whatever game she was playing. Sam gave it a good thirty minutes before he poked the hornet’s nest.

“Can I ask you two a question?” he said.

“You can try, but it’s probably part of your secret evil scheme to trick Cas into using powers she doesn’t even remember how to use,” said Deanna. “Or something.”

Sam ignored that.

“The two of you used to be able to… hear each other’s thoughts?” Sam said, still not entirely sure how all of that had worked. “Is that still…?”

“No,” said Deanna without hesitation. “Not that it’s not obvious what Cas is thinking right now.”

“And what is that?” Cas muttered quietly.

“This dumb human definitely doesn't know what I’m thinking right now.”

“Bravo,” said Cas, voice dripping with sarcasm. She turned to Sam. “I can hear echoes. From all of you. Not thoughts exactly, more like…”

Cas paused, searching for a term.

“Hopes. Longings. Wishes,” she said at last. “Not the specifics, just that they’re there.”

She looked between Sam and Eileen.

“You’re both sad,” she added quietly. “And frustrated.”

“That’s enough of that,” said Sam, cutting Cas off. She seemed a little offended, but shrugged and went back to pretending everyone else didn’t exist.

By the time Sam had pulled into Bobby’s house, he was so damn exhausted he hardly remembered that he hadn’t entirely filled Bobby in at the extent of Deanna’s memory loss. He’d mostly been focused on getting back on home turf and safe, and had skipped over the details for the most part.

“Who’s this guy?” Deanna asked when Bobby rolled down the ramp at the side of his house to come down to see them. He narrowed his eyes at her, and then looked up at Sam in question.

“I can explain everything inside,” Sam said after a second. Bobby nodded and they followed him back in, Eileen subtly positioning herself behind Deanna and Cas to keep them from wandering off elsewhere. Once inside, Deanna amused herself reading the titles of various books on Bobby’s shelves and exclaiming more than once how cool it all was. Sam cut himself off more than once out of shock at the sheer happy go lucky attitude Deanna had suddenly adopted.

“You know reading the wrong book can kill you,” Cas said out of nowhere. Deanna rolled her eyes at her.

“Trucker cap, this book gonna kill me?” Deanna said, addressing Bobby. She got a grumpy no in response and went back to perusing it. “Glad you care, Cas.”

“According to Sam, your death would cause my own.”

“Self interest. I can appreciate that. Admirable quality.”

Sam decided he was never going to get through any kind of actual explanation with the two of them at each other’s throats five feet from him, so he made the executive decision to sit Deanna and Cas in front of the television in the other room and told them to entertain themselves. Deanna almost kicked up a fuss about being treated like a kid, but was then thoroughly distracted by Cas’ channel surfing and trying to convince her to hand over the remote.

By the time Sam got back to where Eileen and Bobby were sipping tea, what he most wanted to do was collapse in a chair and mentally recharge. Unfortunately, Bobby was looking at him, clearly waiting for the promised explanation. If Sam was remembering correctly, Bobby was many things but patient was not one of them.

“We were in Spain,” Sam started, recounting the exact events as best as he could remember. Eileen signed reminders on occasion, and he added in the details easily nodding to her in thanks. Bobby listened to everything and when they were done, switched from tea to whiskey.

“That ain’t good,” he said, to start off with. “Whatever those girls pissed off was either a god or-“

“An angel right?” Sam broke in. Bobby snorted.

“This thing overpowered Cas that easily? We ain’t talking someone rank and file,” said Bobby. “And these things are supposed to be extinct. If there’s more than just Cas and with that much juice, well…”

“There could be more than just the one,” said Sam uneasily. “Cas’ll be happy about that.”

“I gotta imagine right now the only thing Cas is doing is wondering why the hell she seemed to like Deanna so much,” said Bobby. “Gotta say, I’m not impressed with this pigtail pulling bullshit that girl’s getting into. Thought Deanna knew better than that.”

“Deanna didn’t even remember her own name,” Sam said, because that really wasn’t fair. Bobby conceded the point. “I think the two of them are just acting… instinctually. No memories to draw off of, so Cas sees Deanna as a threat and Deanna sees Cas as…”

Sam finished off, not quite sure how to answer that. Eileen frowned at him and started signing.

‘Someone who according to us should love her and doesn’t,’ signed Eileen. ‘A partner who seems to be actively rejecting her.’

Huh, thought Sam. He thought again about how Deanna and Cas’ thoughts were no longer connected and couldn’t help but think that that shifted their dynamic entirely. There was no instant remedy to misgivings or miscommunications. Instead, two very different people were told that they used to love each other without any reference to why or how that happened. It was an excellent method of trying to separate the two of them.

“Cas as a challenge. She always did like making friends,” Sam finished at last, not entirely focused on what he’s saying anymore. He focused his eyes and saw the time on the clock reading 2 a.m. and decided they get into the rest of it tomorrow. It wasn’t like the amnesiacs were going anywhere.

Holy shit, please let the amnesiacs not wander off Sam thought to himself, horrified.

“I need to sleep,” Sam said. “Let’s pick this up tomorrow.”

“I’ll look into it,” Bobby said, wheeling towards his books.

“You need to sleep too, Bobby.”

“I can sleep when I’m dead,” he muttered back at Sam. Eileen had turned in time to lipread what he said and half smiled at Bobby, causing Bobby to reluctantly smile back. Something in Sam’s mind noted in a pleased way that that was a sure sign that Bobby liked Eileen, and that was an important development for reasons Sam was certain he should still be ignoring.

‘Do you want to take shifts watching them?’ Eileen signed at him, her head dipping towards the room where the muffled blare of the television speakers could be heard. Sam nodded at her and then went into the other room to see Deanna snoring gently and curled up awkwardly on Bobby’s too short couch. Cas was sitting on the ground, cross legged in front of the television, seemingly enthralled with a roadrunner cartoon.

Sam winced in sympathy at Deanna’s obviously uncomfortable sleeping situation and walked over to push her awake. The second he tried, she grabbed a fistful of his shirt, took out the knife from his belt and had it pointed at his stomach.

“Just fucking try it, dickhead,” she said, eyes struggling to open properly.

“Jesus Christ, it’s me,” Sam said, hands up instantly. “Sam, remember?”

Slowly comprehension started making it’s way into Deanna’s expression. She relaxed and lowered the knife from where it had been pointing just below his rib cage.

“Sam. Brother,” she said, nodding to herself. “I remember.”

“You do?” Sam asked skeptically.

“Well, I remember you telling me that, anyway,” Deanna said, flipping the knife and handing it back to him handle first before settling back into her nap.

“There are other places to sleep,” he tried.

“‘M’fine here,” Deanna mumbled into the couch before she started snoring again.

“Yeah, well when your spine needs readjusting don’t come crying to me,” Sam muttered. He was about to leave when he saw Cas had moved and was now standing behind him, watching them. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he turned around.

“I’ll help,” she said, walking past Sam. Before Sam could warn her off, Cas reached forward and pressed a hand to Deanna’s forehead, pushing back through her hair and cradling the back of her head before slowly helping her sit up. Sam watched in awe as Cas managed to lift Deanna into her arms, slowly but steadily and Deanna didn’t do much more than huddle a little closer so her head was resting against Cas’ shoulder. Cas looked down at her, looking almost as confused as Sam feels.

“How did you know how to do that?” Sam asked, having more than enough proof that Deanna’s reaction to people catching her unawares was to attack first and ask questions later.

“I don’t know,” said Cas. “It just seemed to be… the right way.”

That statement hung in the air a moment.

“There’s a bedroom for her to sleep in?” Cas prompted after a moment. Sam nodded and pointed, and Cas went off carrying Deanna effortlessly. When Sam felt a tap on his shoulder he nearly jumped again. This time it was Eileen who was trying to give him a heart attack.

‘I saw that,’ Eileen signed at him, looking after Deanna and Cas thoughtfully. ‘And earlier today-‘

‘The radio,’ Sam signed back. Deanna had known just how far to turn the dial for all the local stations. ‘And Cas was holding her hand on the plane.’

‘Almost like…’ Eileen signed, before stopping and seeming to think.

Sam did the same before it hit him.

‘Muscle memory,’ he signed. ‘Maybe, if we keep pushing at that, we can trigger the memories themselves. It’s worth a shot.’

‘How do we do that?’ asked Eileen. Sam gave her a look, and she frowned at him in disapproval. ‘We are not taking them on a hunt.’

‘It’s what they know. If anything is going to trigger a memory-‘

‘Hunts get people killed, Sam.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ Sam signed. He took him a moment to realize he’d said it out loud as well, and not anywhere in the realm of quiet. ‘My mom died on a hunt, in case you forgot.’

‘And I would think you wouldn’t want to lose your sister too,’ signed Eileen.

‘I already did,’ signed Sam. ‘I’m trying to get her back. That’s what she would want me to be doing. We’ll pick an easy hunt and we’ll be careful.’

For a long moment, Eileen wouldn’t look at him. But in the end she caved, and Sam felt a mixture of relief and shame for forcing her hand this way.

‘Fine,’ signed Eileen. ‘But I don’t have to like it.’

They ended up researching a case to do instead of sleeping. By their third cup of coffee, Sam could see Eileen starting to fade, her eyes going blank as she argued for the umpteenth time that they had to choose a salt and burn. Sam, for the umpteenth time said there was no way in hell that was happening. He didn’t care if he was being unreasonable, if they took Deanna on a salt and burn, all Sam would be able to think about is how his mother had died on a damn salt and burn, and he hadn’t known for so many years. By morning, he’d finally scoured the newspapers of several different states and found…

“A wendigo,” he said. Eileen sighed and nodded. A compromise, then. Or at the very least a recognition that Sam was going to remain stuck in his ways and the only method of keeping him out of trouble was going along with it. “Everything is going to be fine.”

Sam was wrong. Sam was so goddamn wrong.

The time between finding the case and seeing Eileen lying on the ground choking on her own blood didn’t seem to exist the same as time usually does. Sam kept trying to snatch back the seconds, hours, days and identify what the hell went wrong and undo it, because he couldn’t lose Eileen. He just couldn’t.

He could feel the heat of fire behind him, as Deanna managed to torch the damn monster, but Sam was kneeling by Eileen’s side, trying to think of some goddamn way to help her.

“You’re fine,” he said to her, hoping she could read his lips as he puts pressure on the wounds. “Angels can- Cas healed some girl’s arm, during our escape. She can fix you.”

Eileen gave a full body shudder, and Sam shouted for Cas to get the fuck over here. He knows in the back of his head he sounds like a god damn lunatic, sounds scary, fuck, sounds like his dad but he wants to hit something because Eileen is… Eileen is…

“You have to fix her,” Sam said, looking up at the unsettling blue eyes of an angel who owed him nothing and didn’t even remember what her tenuous connection to him was in the first place. “Please, Cas, you have to-“

“I’m sorry,” Cas said, and she sounded it. Her expression was caught off guard and sad. “Sam, I don’t know how to. I don’t remember anything.”

Sam wanted to scream at her to fucking try at least, but Eileen tapped his hands and he turned his attention back to her. Eileen’s eyes betrayed the urgency of the situation as they flicked back and forth between Deanna and Cas, obviously trying to signify something to Sam. With great effort she lifted her hands and signed at him.

‘Muscle memory.’

Realization hit. Sam nodded at her, and felt a sharp rise in panic when as soon as he did, Eileen’s eyes seemed to roll back slightly as she lost consciousness. Pressing down the urge to plead with her to wake back up, Sam turned to look back at where Deanna was looking on in unchecked horror.

“Deanna,” he said, causing her attention to snap in his direction. “I need you to scream.”

“You- what?” Deanna asked, lacking comprehension. Her eyes drifted back towards Eileen and Sam could feel the limp grip of Eileen’s hand in his. Desperation filled him.

“Trust me,” said Sam. “Scream.”

The ‘trust me’ seemed to do it, and Deanna let out an ungodly wail that in other circumstances would have had Sam running to see who the hell was being murdered. Within an instant there was a rush of air, and Cas reappeared ten feet from where she had been to arrive at Deanna’s side, her hand reached out to touch Deanna. An instant, almost instinctive reaction. The second Cas’ fingers touched her, Deanna’s entire body relaxed a fraction and her mouth opened in surprise. Sam saw a bruise on her jaw fade instantly and several cuts close.

“Neato,” Deanna said out loud, patting at where her injures had previously been. Then she remembered herself and looked back at Cas hesitantly. “Cas, can you do that again to-?”

Before she finished her sentence, Cas was at Eileen’s side and pressed her fingers to Eileen’s forehead. Sam held his breath, praying to whoever the fuck was out there that it would work. When Eileen’s eyelids fluttered and her grip on Sam’s hand tightened again, he let out a sigh of relief and crushed her against his chest. Eileen pushed away for a second before realizing where she was, and then she hugged Sam back just as tightly.

“I owe you an I told you so,” Eileen said against his chest, though it came out too flat to be funny.

“I’m so sorry,” Sam whispered, knowing Eileen couldn’t hear him and hoping that she could feel the sentiment in the way he was holding her. They stayed like that for a long time before Deanna carefully pried them off of each other and explained they needed to hike out of the woods before it got dark.

Eileen and Sam didn’t talk as they walked, and Sam thought over and over again about how the hell he was going to be able to make it up to her. Once they reached the cars, Sam watched as Deanna expertly dragged Cas into the back of the Impala with her in order to give Sam and Eileen space.

‘Eileen,’ he signed towards her at last. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s fine.’

“It’s not,’ Sam signed back. ‘If I hadn’t pushed it-‘

‘I’m okay, Sam,’ Eileen pointed out, but she still seemed on edge. There was no forgiveness in the way her shoulders hunched forward. ‘Believe it or not, I’ve been through worse before I ever even met you and I’ve always been fine. You were trying to help your sister. I get it.’

‘If I thought anything like that would happen I never would have-‘

‘If you had listened to me, then it wouldn’t have,’ Eileen signed back preemptively. Angrily. ‘But you thought you knew better. It didn’t matter how many times I told you that working with brand new hunters could get someone hurt, did it? I guess you lived up to the Campbell legacy after all.’

Sam couldn’t think of a thing to say. He felt his hands drop to his sides.

‘This is why I work alone,’ signed Eileen. She didn’t look at him as she kept signing. ‘Sam, I think I need a break. I think you need one too.’

‘What does that mean?’ Sam asked, but dear God he didn’t want to hear the answer.

‘It means please don’t get hurt,’ signed Eileen. She paused and seemed to gather herself for the next part. ‘But it also means don’t call me.’

And then she turned around, got into her car and drove off. Sam watched her, slack jawed and unable to force himself to move from where he was standing. Five minutes after Eileen had left, Deanna opened the door to the car, and stuck her head out.

“Hey, uh, Sammy?” she said carefully. “Are we going to be leaving any time soon?”

Sam snapped himself out of it, and walked over the car, forcefully slamming the door shut as soon he had sat himself down. Then he drove and drove and tried not to think at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, almost finished. One more chapter of the main story to go. The reason it now says 13 chapters instead of 12 is because I'm adding an epilogue.
> 
> Feedback is always appreciated :)


	12. Chapter 12

“Why do I have to talk to him?” Deanna muttered to Cas as they peeked from behind the motel curtains to see Sam sitting by himself next to the soda machine. He wasn’t crying, so that was a good sign, Deanna supposed, but he did have a kind of vacant look in his eyes.

“You’re human. You understand these things,” Cas whispered back. She leaned her head forward a little more to catch another glance of Sam. Deanna shooed away a thought about Cas looking cute while she was focusing so hard. “Heartbreak.”

“Honey, have you seen me?” said Deanna, waving her hand up and down her body and choking down a little laugh when Cas’ eyes followed. “I’ve never had my heart broken in my life. And even if I had, I can’t remember it anyway. You’re like a gazillion years old and know the chemical make up of Saturn. You go do it.”

“You’re his sister.”

“You’re annoying,” Deanna shot back. She looked out the window at the forlorn figure of her brother, and felt herself soften. “Especially when you’re right, damnit. Fine, I’ll go talk to him but you owe me.”

Cas seemed to sag with relief, hearing that.

“Anything you want,” said Cas.

“Oh sweetheart, think about it a little longer than that,” said Deanna. “Anything I want is a long and well thought out list, and I guarantee you don’t want to do more than half of it.”

“I guess you’d have to ask,” said Cas, and hold up a fucking second. Deanna narrowed her eyes at Cas.

“Was that a come on?”

Cas widened her eyes in a show of false innocence only betrayed by her there and gone spasm of a smile. Deanna let a slow grin steal across her face, and leaned forward a little farther, halving the space between the two of them. Cas neither moved backwards nor forwards.

“Knew you’d warm up to me,” said Deanna. Cas reached out and tucked Deanna’s hair behind her ear, letting her hand rest on her face a moment.

“I must have loved you,” said Cas after a second. “So much.”

It was like a bucket of cold water being poured on her. Deanna took a hurried step back and Cas let her hand drop. It was obvious to Deanna that the damn angel knew she’d messed up somehow, but just couldn’t understand what she’d done. Well, she was right about one thing. Deanna was far better equipped to talk to Sam than Cas was.

“I should go talk to Sam,” said Deanna.

“Did I-?”

“You’re fine, Cas. I’m just not interested. In fact, I kinda hate your guts,” said Deanna. Cas stared back at her, uncomprehending. “I was fucking with you, Jesus. You think I give a single shit whether or not you like me? I just thought it would be funny to see you squirm. Get over it.”

Cas’ eyes got squinty and angry as she looked at Deanna. Her chin jutted forward as she grit her teeth and her hands balled up, and God Deanna knew she couldn’t remember a damn thing but she was pretty sure she’d never wanted to kiss a fool so damn much in her entire life.

“You’re lying,” she said.

“Yeah, well,” said Deanna. “I don’t know much about myself, but if that doesn’t sound like me.”

And with that, Deanna made her way out the motel door, slamming it behind her. Cas didn’t bother trying to follow her out, which was fine. It wasn’t as if Deanna wanted her to anyway.

Sam looked up as Deanna got halfway towards him, and then looked back down just as quickly, clearly willing her away. No such luck, Deanna thought to herself as she sat down next to him on the pavement and tried not to think of all the gross shit that had probably happened in this exact spot in this scuzzy motel… Right, Sam, Deanna reminded herself. She could shower off the germs later.

“So,” Deanna started. “First serious break up?”

“Not even close,” Sam said, still not looking at her. “And it wasn’t like that with Eileen.”

“Because you didn’t like her like that?”

“Because I knew something like this would happen,” said Sam. “Not… not the getting hurt part. The screwing up part. I knew I was going to mess it up.”

Deanna looked back toward the motel room.

“Must run in the family,” she muttered to herself. “You know the best way to fix a broken heart?”

“Tequila,” they both said at the same time. Deanna pushed him gently at the mocking tone he said it in, and was glad to see something relaxing in his shoulders.

“You, uh, gave me this talk when I was eighteen,” said Sam. “Lenore. She was a vampire, and she broke things off with me because I told her I was going to end up a hunter whether she liked it or not, and to get used to it. I got upset and I called you, and you hauled ass from some research library in Minnesota with a bottle of tequila and Dracula on DVD. We got drunk and spent the whole night calling vampires losers.”

“Wow, I’m awesome,” said Deanna. Sam rolled his eyes and hunched forward again, as though he were trying to look smaller. “C’mon kiddo. I’m pretty sure Eileen just needs space. She almost died. That’s gotta mess a person up.”

“She trusted me and I let her down,” said Sam. “And I don’t know how to fix that.”

“Maybe you can’t,” said Deanna. “But, hey, if she loves you, she’ll forgive you anyway. It was a mistake, Sam. I don’t know you, but I know enough to say that if you thought for a second anything like that would have happened, you never would have gone after that hunt.”

“You don’t get it,” said Sam. “Eileen doesn’t trust people. She- I’m all she’s got. Well, Mildred too, but-“

“You’re family,” said Deanna, when Sam seemed lost for words. Sam nodded, and finally his eyes started to look shiny, and Deanna spared him the embarrassment of his big sister seeing him cry by pulling him in for a hug. “Well, then she’ll come back. When she’s licked her wounds and can think about what happened with her head on straight, she’ll come back.”

Sam nodded against her shoulder, and Deanna squeezed a second before letting go and looking straight ahead, giving Sam the privacy for a few tears if he needed them. Then they sat in silence, until Sam took a shaky breath and Deanna turned to look at him.

“We’re in a fight,” he said. “You and me.”

“Well, I’d apologize, but,” Deanna said, playing off the uneasiness with a smile. “It’d be kinda useless considering I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Not that kind of fight,” said Sam. “I mean, the right and the wrong of it isn’t that… simple. It’s kind of nice, you not knowing. I don’t have to pretend to be so angry at you. Don’t get me wrong, I am angry. But mostly I’m just tired, now. And I don’t know what to do. Everything’s a fucking mess.”

“Vodka’s cool, too.”

“And this is what I get for asking our resident alcoholic for advice,” Sam said with a start stop stutter of a laugh. “Or not asking, I guess.”

“I was just making sure you were okay,” said Deanna. “Cas is the one who’s, like, worried sick about you. She was twisting her hands all in knots, trying to figure out if you were alright and she practically made me come talk to you. You sure I’m the one she was married to and you’re not just trying to pawn her off on me so you can get it on with Eileen?”

And just like that, Sam had gone from cautiously friendly to completely unamused. If the bitch face Deanna got in response to that question wasn’t proof they were siblings, Deanna didn’t know what was.

“So you’re still into her, huh?” he said, cutting through the bullshit with a knife. “No memories, no mind control, and you still want her.”

“A bit,” Deanna said. Sam raised an eyebrow. “A lot.”

“Well, I guess that solves that mystery,” he muttered to himself. “You genuinely do like her. No strings on you.”

“Yeah, three cheers for me,” said Deanna. “Not that it matters.”

“Why’s that?” Sam asked.

“C’mon,” said Deanna. “Just because we fell in love once doesn’t mean it’s going to happen again. Hell, I’m half convinced it didn’t even happen the first time. She just walks around wondering what the fuck she even saw in me. Hate to break it to her, but I’m not whoever that other version of her fell in love with. I’m just me, and I don’t need to hear how she probably liked me in a past life. Must’ve. But you know, not now. And I’m not going back, so…”

“You telling me this too?” Sam asked after a second. “Because… I’m sorry, but I do want the old you back, Deanna.”

“I don’t,” said Deanna. “No offense, kiddo, but you’re kind of a mess and I’m going to take a wild guess that your childhood plays into that. Which means my childhood plays into my whole deal, and no thank you to that. I like being able to sleep at night.”

“There’s good stuff in there too,” Sam pointed out. “People you love. Mom, Dad, Bobby, Charlie-“

“It doesn’t matter,” said Deanna. “We don’t know how to get them back, anyway.”

“Yeah, I guess we don’t,” admitted Sam. “But I’m going to keep looking.”

Deanna shrugged and looked back toward the motel room where she could see the curtain flutter suddenly and knew Cas had been watching them.

“You do what you need to do,” said Deanna.

“So about that vodka…” said Sam.

Sam wasn’t exactly okay after this little chat, but he managed to drag himself and Deanna and Cas off to Bobby’s where they were asked to stay while Sam got back into hunting for a while with whoever he could scrounge up on his network that wasn’t attached to the Men of Letters in some way or another. Meanwhile, Deanna and Cas were left at the mercy of a pissy Bobby.

Cas and Deanna took to figuring out Bobby’s moods and trying to prevent the crankiness as much as possible by adjusting themselves accordingly. In other words, they knew when to get out of the house and leave Bobby the fuck alone. Usually that meant Deanna stole his toolbox and worked on a truck she had picked out to try and get up and running again and Cas would wander off by herself God knows where.

About six weeks and two brief visits from Sam later, Cas started coming back from her walks early in order to see Deanna at work. If Deanna started making sure her clothing was a little tighter on her when this happened, well that was her fucking business, thank you very much. Unfortunately, Cas seemed much more interested in what she was doing than how she looked.

“Why fix it?” Cas asked, nodding towards the truck while Deanna took a water break. “No one we know will want it.”

“Why not?” asked Deanna. “It’s something to do. Keeps my head busy. I like to think of it as me time.”

“I see,” said Cas, as though she didn’t see at all and was chalking it down to another quirk of humanity’s.

“You know those long ass walks you take?” asked Deanna. “This is my version of that, okay?”

Cas shrugged and muttered something.

“What?”

“I haven’t been taking walks,” said Cas.

“Meditating?”

“No, I-“ Cas frowned to herself a moment as though unsure she should go on. Deanna caught a glimpse of the look Sam used to get when he’d been caught red handed stealing candy from Deanna’s secrets stash in the kitchen. The fact that she could make a cosmic being feel guilty made Deanna a little light headed.

“Spit it out, Cas.”

“Bobby has a garden. Or he used to, I mean,” Cas muttered. “I was fixing it. I didn’t think it would be a problem.”

“It’s not. Relax, this isn’t the Spanish Inquisition,” said Deanna. Cas brightened slightly at that, then glanced at the car before turning her head to look over her shoulder and back at Deanna again.

“Do you want to see it?” she asked, sounding almost shy.

The first thing Deanna thought when she saw what Cas had done with the patch of land she’d found- must have been Bobby’s garden before an angry witch had landed him in a wheelchair with an injury even Cas couldn’t fix- was that Cas had actually managed to make it look pretty nice with whatever the hell she’d been doing.

The second thing she realized had her bending over laughing.

“What?” Cas demanded, sparing a glance for her poor damn flowers like they might get offended.

“Cas, these are all weeds,” Deanna managed to get out, before practically doubling over laughing again. Dandelions, and those tall white flowers that grow on the sides of highways, and just about every goddamn kind of vine seemed to be coexisting pleasantly in the garden under Cas’ careful hand. It was the funniest fucking thing Deanna had seen in weeks.

“They’re pretty, hardy, and local,” said Cas. She crossed her arms defensively. “And I like them.”

“You made a weed garden,” said Deanna, between bursts of laughter. “God, I love you.”

The second the words left her mouth Deanna felt like she’d been hit with a ton of bricks. Bits and pieces of herself started taking shape again, and fragments of moments came back to her, bouncing across her mind with a vengeance. It was enough to send her to her knees, bile rising in her throat. Deanna swallowed hard, and forced herself back up.

“Jesus Christ, Cas,” she said in awe, unable to believe that she had somehow fucking forgotten her incredible wife, and Jesus there were about fifty uncharitable things she’d thought in the past few weeks that she wished she could take back this fucking second. She frowned when she realized that Cas was staring frozen at where Deanna had been kneeling moments before.

“That shouldn’t even count,” said a voice that tickled at the edges of Deanna’s recently recovered memories. “You were making fun of her.”

Deanna spun around.

“Gabriel.”

“The one and only,” he said back, still looking at Cas like he was trying to figure something out. “I mean, repression is practically programmed into your blood, and you got through on a loophole.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Deanna evenly. “But I do know that if you don’t fix whatever the fuck you did to Cas this fucking second I am going to run you through with a wrench.”

“Not that it hasn’t been entertaining,” Gabriel continued, ignoring Deanna. “And you were this close to pushing her away like you were supposed to.”

“You’ve been watching us?” Deanna asked, cottoning on to what Gabriel was going on about. “Nothing better to do?”

“Last time I left Cas alone for a second she got herself cursed by a witch,” said Gabriel. “Believe it or not, princess, you’re not the only one who cares about her.”

“Right. Because there’s nothing like lies and manipulation to say I…” Deanna started trailing off. “I love you. That was the trigger?”

“I’ll give you this, you’re not as dumb as you look,” said Gabriel. “I got into your head, remember? It took you, what, eleven years to say it the first time around?”

Deanna didn’t really have anything to say to that because, uh yeah, it had. And there were about a million good reasons for that.

“Baggage. Which you helpfully removed,” said Deanna sarcastically. A few more pieces to the puzzle of how Gabriel worked slid into place, and Deanna sorted through a couple more tricks he had up his sleeve. “And every time I felt nauseous when I tried to think about what Cas was or trying to find anything that had to do with her past, that was-“

“Written into the binding spell on the rock,” said Gabriel. “Protection against asshole hunters figuring out there was an angel in the outfield. Theoretically.”

“Maybe you’re not as dumb as you look,” said Deanna, vaguely remembering it was not a good idea to antagonize an archangel and going ahead and doing it anyway. “So you gotta know by now, no matter what you do it’s gonna end up the same way.”

Gabriel finally stopped looking at Cas and gave Deanna his full attention. It felt like recognition as an equal, almost. It also made Deanna feel like ice was running through her veins, because even though he was wearing some normal looking guy, this was a being old as dust and what did he care if he snapped his fingers and she was gone? Cas was the only thing truly keeping her safe from him, as infuriating as Deanna was sure Gabriel found that. If she died, Cas was going to be dragged right along with her.

“You’re going to destroy her,” said Gabe. “But if that’s what she wants, mazel fucking tov. I’m not a babysitter and Castiel isn’t a child.”

“Right. That line would work better if you weren’t so obviously a control freak.”

“Takes one to know one,” said Gabriel flippantly. His eyes slid back to Cas, and his eyes softened, if only a fraction. “But I think, Deanna, that we can both do the right thing.”

With that and a snap, he disappeared and Cas unfroze. At first she just looked confused at how Deanna had gone from kneeling to standing without having moved, and then her eyes widened and before Deanna knew what was happening Cas’ arms were around her shoulders squeezing tight.

“I didn’t know how much I missed you,” Cas said. “I’m sorry for-“

“Me too,” Deanna said, breaking off the apology. “I was being an asshole.”

“You were being cautious,” Cas corrected, pressing her lips to Deanna’s neck, and whoa they were not doing that outside next to a bunch of weeds (no offense to Cas, but Deanna did not want to wake up with a rash where the sun don’t shine, thank you very much). Besides, Deanna had some important stuff to get out.

“I talked to Gabriel,” Deanna said. Cas stiffened. “We need to break it, Cas.”

Cas took a step back, her expression guarded. After a few seconds, Deanna felt Cas’ thoughts flowing back into hers, a tentative hello. She poked at Deanna’s mind as though asking a question, and Deanna reached out to take her hand.

“I’m not tying us together, okay?” said Deanna. “Because… he’s right, damnit. If I can’t trust you to stick around, I’m not worth sticking around for.”

“I’m not trapped, Deanna.”

“Exactly,” said Deanna. “So maybe it’s time we got rid of the chains, huh?”

“But you still…” Cas started, swallowing hard. “I am still… wanted?”

“You’re not the sharpest knife in the tool shed, are you?” Deanna said, regretting it when Cas recoiled from her. Deanna squeezed her hand. “Every fucking second, Cas. I couldn’t stop wanting you if I tried. And Gabriel gave it a pretty good shot.”

Cas took a deep breath and started the spell. Bit by bit, Deanna felt Cas slip away and the familiar panic welled up inside her, but this time she told it to shut the fuck up. Gabriel could go fuck himself, but if he had proven one thing with his dumb test it was that there was a lot more holding her and Cas together than a spell.

It broke, and Deanna felt her ears pop and her eyes start to water, the sizzle of electricity running through her and then dissipating. She smiled at Cas.

“Still here, right?” Deanna said softly. Cas nodded, but her eyes were closed and she didn’t start breathing until Deanna took her face in her hands and leant forward to kiss the tip of Cas’ nose. “Yep, still here.”

Cas opened her eyes and pressed up to catch Deanna’s lips, winding her arms around her waist, and pressing a hand up the back of her shirt, and well… maybe a rash wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

The buzzing of her phone had Deanna stepping back with a sigh and glaring at her brother’s name.

“What?” she snapped when she picked up. Sam was quiet for a second.

“Deanna?”

“Who did you think you were calling?” she asked. And then. “Oh shit, yeah. Memories back. Me again. Hi.”

“Well, that makes this… different,” Sam said. “Fuck. Okay, we need to go to Kansas.”

“I thought we were avoiding that state.”

“Just trust me,” said Sam. “And leave Cas with Bobby. Just in case.”

He hung up and texted her where to meet him. Deanna said she was on her way and then took a nice long hour of reuniting with her wife before actually leaving because Sam could go screw himself with his stupid vagueness. Cas didn’t much like being left behind, but Deanna could be damn persuasive if she said so herself.

It was a long drive to Kansas, and Deanna spent the whole of it trying to figure out what the hell she was doing there. Every time, she came up with one answer. Sam wanted to go home and talk things out, and Jesus she wasn’t ready for that. Still, she wasn’t going to let her dumb brother do it alone.

The coordinates she pulled up to were at the side of a highway, middle of goddamn nowhere and the first thing she saw when she parked was in the distance there were two men standing next to what looked like a funeral pyre. Something seized in Deanna’s throat, and she slammed the door on her way out of the car.

“Sorry, baby,” she said patting her car gently in a brief apology. She walked slowly to where her brother and her father were busy searching for more wood to put on and Deanna remembered that god damn night where her father had sent her off looking for twigs and stone. Enough to build a body with.

And now enough to burn a body with.

“What are we doing?” Deanna asked, as if she didn’t know. Sam jumped, spinning around from where he had been picking up wood. He looked away from her to avoid meeting her eyes.

“What we should have done twenty years ago,” John answered. Deanna nodded and looked to the fire, where the body was wrapped tight. “I asked what she wanted Deanna.”

“I know,” said Deanna. Because Mary had asked her that once. Just once. Break the spell and let me rest in peace. And Deanna had nearly fucking lost it. Then her mom had held her and told her she was sorry, and that she should never have said something like that in the first place. That she was so damn sorry for putting that responsibility on Deanna’s shoulders for even a second. “I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

Now it was John who wouldn’t meet her eye. He and Sam finished building the pyre, and poured gasoline over it. Soon enough it was getting dark and there was nothing left to prepare. Just a body to burn.

“Let me do it,” Deanna said when she saw her father struggling to get out his lighter. She wasn’t sure if the look he gave her was frightened, proud, or angry, and at this point she was too fucking tired to try to unravel what the hell her dad was feeling. The truth was she knew he could do it himself, and maybe she was trying to spare him the pain of having to burn the love of his life. Or maybe she was claiming Mary Winchester as her responsibility because when she thought of what her dad had done, Deanna’s skin still crawled and her stomach clenched up in knots.

Deanna thought she should have felt more, watching her mother’s body go up in flames, but all she felt was relief. Mary Winchester had died twenty years ago, and this was heartbreaking but it wasn’t the earth shattering realization that it had been when she was fourteen. So Deanna turned, and pulled her brother into a hug, because one look at his shaking shoulders was enough for her to realize that it wasn’t the same for him. This was Mary Winchester’s funeral and Sam was falling apart.

“I’m so sorry, Sammy,” Deanna said. “I should have told you. I should have called. I should have… I can’t take it back, but I’m damn sorry.”

She felt Sam nod, and felt deep in her bones that she was forgiven. Or at least that this was the start of it. It was something like catharsis, she supposed.

And if she stole her brother’s phone and sent a quick ‘He needs you’ to a certain hunter before replacing it, well he could forgive her for that someday, too.

Deanna pushed Sam off with an order to get into the Impala, surprised when he went without some kind of snarky comeback. Then she collected herself and turned to look at her father.

“This don’t make it right,” she said. “I hope you know that.”

“Is there a way to?” John asked. Deanna didn’t say a thing. “That’s what I thought.”

He dug around in his pocket until he found whatever he was looking for. Deanna stayed where she was, wanting something from her father and hoping whatever he was getting would fill that awful gaping wound inside her. That something missing that she never thought too closely about, for fear of being sucked into the emptiness of it.

“She wanted you to have this,” said John. Deanna looked down to see her mother’s wedding ring glinting in the light off of the funeral pyre. “She said she hopes you’re happy.”

“Thank you,” said Deanna, taking the ring from him. John flinched when she touched him. “You gotta know who I’m going to give this to.”

“Yeah, well, I’m only doing this because Mary asked,” said John. “I will never be okay with you and that thing.”

Deanna closed her hand around the ring.

“Yeah, well,” she said. “Have a nice fucking life, I guess. Try to be a better man, dad.”

“Stop,” John said when Deanna tried to turn, and she hated herself for listening. For letting the overwhelming nature of everything that was happening have her default to following orders like she was still some scared fourteen year old. “You know you don’t get out of the Men of Letters so easy, right? Especially not after the stunt you pulled to escape questioning.”

“Is that a threat?” Deanna asked flatly.

“It’s a warning,” John corrected. “You’re still my daughter, Deanna. Take care of yourself.”

Go fuck yourself.

“You too,” Deanna said out loud. She turned away from him, walked back to the car and didn’t look back once. When she got behind the wheel, Sam turned to look at her.

“You okay?”

“Hell no. And neither are you, and neither of us feels like talking about it so let’s cut it out while we’re ahead,” said Deanna. Sam looked taken aback, but kept quiet through Deanna starting the engine and them heading back on the road, pointed toward South Dakota.

“And Cas is-“

“Still very flexible, thank you for asking,” said Deanna. She smiled at the brief grossed out look on her brother’s face. “She’s dealing. We’re both dealing.”

“Good for you.”

“Hey Sam,” Deanna said, sensing the returning bitterness in her brother’s voice. “Thing’s are going to get better, okay? And I’m here for you this time. Promise.”

It took a moment, but the anger drained out of Sam’s face.

“Okay. Okay,” he said. “Mom’s dead.”

“Yeah.”

“And I hate it. It’s not fair.”

“Not even a little,” said Deanna. “Life ain’t.”

Sam leant his head against the window and closed his eyes. After a while, Deanna figured he was asleep so she turned the radio down and kept her eyes pointed forward.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Sam said quietly over the quiet murmur of voices on the radio. Deanna allowed herself a small smile.

“Me too, Sammy,” she said. “Now get some sleep. You need it, kiddo.”

A little while later, Deanna heard Sam’s snoring start up. A buzz on his phone nearly startled him awake, but ended up not being quite loud enough to rouse him. Deanna picked up the phone to see a message from one Eileen Leahy.

‘I’m on my way.’

Deanna let out a sigh of relief.

“Things are gonna work out,” Deanna said out loud, setting the phone back down. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But they will. You and me, we’re gonna learn from our mistakes, Sam. We’re gonna figure out how to do things right, and we’re gonna get better at all of this. At being people. And when all is said and done… it’s gonna work out.”

Sam just kept snoring, but that was neither here nor there. Deanna had said her piece, and if the universe had any fucking decency it would be listening. And driving in her car at two in the morning with her brother at her side, and her wife waiting for her to come home, well… that wasn’t nothing.

Hell, it was everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still an epilogue to go, so stick around if you want an ending that's a little less bittersweet. Always glad to hear feedback.


	13. Epilogue

Cas and Eileen sat side by side as the Winchesters were arguing with the manager of the Vegas motel they had booked that they needed at least one room on the first floor because the place didn’t have an elevator and one of the guests in their party (Bobby, of course) didn’t much want to be carried up the stairs. Bobby sat between the two of them, yelling that he had specifically asked for a first floor room, and damnit, couldn’t they just ask someone to switch.

Deanna had sent a significant glance Cas’ way about five times. Cas had stopped looking at her, because she didn’t want it to be too obvious that she understood that Deanna was asking Cas to smooth the situation over by “mind-whammying” the manager, just a little. She could claim it was unethical later, if Deanna asked her about it. For now, ignoring it seemed the best course of action.

Instead she turned to Eileen.

‘How are you?’ she signed. Eileen looked up with a smile from what she was doing on her phone, and Castiel signed the question again.

‘Good,’ she signed back. ‘Are you nervous?’

Cas smiled shyly, risking a glance at Deanna.

‘The spiritual significance of a wedding presided over by an Elvis impersonator is not something to be taken lightly,’ Cas signed back. Eileen’s shoulders shook with repressed laughter. ‘It’s important to Deanna.’

‘And for you?’ Eileen asked.

‘I am older than the concept of marriage itself. The idea is ultimately meaningless in the scope of eternity,’ said Cas. ‘I do recognize the importance for beings who are… less long lived. Promises don’t hold much value when time so frequently renders them meaningless to keep.’

‘So you are nervous,’ Eileen signed back. Castiel shrugged her shoulders elegantly, glad to be in the presence of someone who was both direct and kind. She had found it easier, somehow, to become friends with Eileen than with Sam, though her friendship with the latter had come a long way in the two years since they had met. Sometimes, she thought that Sam saw her as something close to a sister. Then again, sometimes she was still sure that Sam saw her as as a being that was a bad day away from becoming an active threat. ‘If it helps, she’s nervous too.’

Deanna had brought up ‘getting married, but you know for real this time’ after a difficult hunt. She had told Eileen and Sam in no uncertain terms not to bother her and Cas for the next few hours, which wasn’t all that unusual. Castiel knew it was a very human thing to desire sex after combat, and wasn’t in the least opposed to the idea. It was after the sex that things had started to deviate from what was normal.

“You ever been to Vegas, Cas?” Deanna had asked, which had seemed like an innocent enough question. Cas was somewhat aware that Deanna and Sam had used to go there to gamble and drink as a kind of bonding activity before Sam had left home for good. Deanna had fond memories of making Sam his first fake ID so he could get into the bars and casinos. Cas had, on occasion, gone on hunts separately from Deanna, so it wasn't out of the question she could have been there, though she found it odd Deanna would think she would go and not tell her about it.

“No,” Cas had said. “I don’t think it would be very fair to the other players.”

Deanna grinned, likely dreaming up the large sums of money they could bank if Cas had been willing. She rolled her eyes at Cas’ disapproval and then curled more closely against Cas, hiding her face against her neck.

“It’d be a quick way to get married,” Deanna had said, almost too quietly to hear.

“Despite how often you ask them, I am fairly sure that Eileen and Sam still aren’t dating, and wouldn’t welcome that.”

“I meant for us, dumbass,” Deanna had muttered. Cas looked down at her to find Deanna still very much avoiding eye contact. “It could be fun.”

“You have a criminal record, are wanted for questioning in six states, and I am not an American citizen, nor do I have any papers of any kind,” Castiel had pointed out. She smiled at the way Deanna’s lips turned down into what could most accurately be described as a pout. Unless Deanna was asking, in which case it was a very dignified frown.

“Do you want to marry me or not?”

“Is this the part where I say yes?” Cas had asked, partly just to wind Deanna up. She received the light punch to her shoulder with grace. “Of course, Deanna.”

“Great. Awesome. Cool. I mean,” Deanna had muttered quickly before snapping her mouth closed to cut off the babbling. She took a deep breath. “I love you.”

“I know.”

“You son of a-“

Eileen waving her hand in front of Castiel’s face broke her away from her memories. She realized now that she had been staring at Deanna with a likely dreamy expression for the last minute or so. Eileen looked slightly concerned.

“Are you alright?” Eileen asked her out loud. Castiel waved away her concern.

“I’m just getting used to…” Castiel trailed off, not wanting to lie. “Deanna can be very distracting.”

Eileen squinted at her, obviously suspicious. Castiel looked for a way to change the subject.

‘I’ve heard it’s a tradition for the best man and the maid of honor to become… romantically involved,’ Cas signed, which made Eileen blush and narrow her eyes in a manner that could only be threatening. ‘You still haven’t talked to him?’

‘What’s there to talk about?’ Eileen signed back, her eyes falling back on her own Winchester. ‘I left, and then I came back. Everything went back to normal. Nothing’s changed.’

‘But it could,’ said Cas. ‘I know it can be difficult to trust people, Eileen. But closing yourself off, being alone… is that really better?’

‘I don’t need him.’

‘You do or you don’t, that isn’t the point,’ Cas signed back. ‘Love isn’t a sign of weakness. And wanting someone does not make you lesser.’

Something about the way she signed this made Eileen look at Castiel a little more fully. She frowned, her attention caught by something on one of Cas’ hands. Before Cas could hide it from sight, Eileen had pulled it towards her, examining it. On the side of Cas’ thumb was a small paper cut. When it didn’t close up, Eileen looked up at Cas, frowning in concern.

“Cas,” she said out loud. Cas pulled her hand away. “Are you alright?”

“It’s a surprise,” Cas said quickly. “Don’t tell-“

“Exactly what is a surprise?” Eileen asked her, worry deepening. Cas shook her head quickly, trying to regain control of the conversation. She’d done so well so far, hiding the change.

‘A good one,’ she signed. ‘Eileen, please.’

After a moment, Eileen gave a short nod. Cas felt herself slump slightly in relief. Whatever the fallout was going to be after all of this, she wanted Deanna’s memories of the wedding at least to be unaffected. If she was going to get angry, it would happen after.

Cas hid the hand with the cut behind her back when Deanna walked back over, seemingly satisfied. The fact her coat had been adjusted to the point that one could see the gun tucked into her waistband, if they knew where to look, explained how the issue with the motel manager had been resolved.

“They found a place on the first floor for Bobby,” said Deanna, smiling innocently at Cas. “So… I was thinking we drop our stuff and then we get headed to the chapel. Don’t want all of Bobby’s hard work and a little identity theft to go to waste.”

Cas stood up and kissed Deanna. Her hands drifted downwards, and she wanted to smile when she felt Deanna respond by tangling her fingers into her hair. In the name of all that was good and holy, it had never felt like this before. So immediate and close and-

“Cas, could you please stop trying to cop a feel on my sister,” said Sam, sounding completely unamused. Cas and Deanna jumped, moving a little farther apart than they had been before. “There’s this human phrase that the two of you are going to get a lot of. It’s called ‘Get a room’.”

Cas hid a grin as Deanna turned around slowly.

“I’m going to put Nair in your fancy conditioner,” she threatened. “Just watch me.”

“Public indecency is a felony,” said Sam.

“Your face is a felony,” Deanna shot back. “And for your information, Mr. I went to law school, public indecency is a misdemeanor.”

“Not if it repeatedly happens.”

Castiel rolled her eyes as the siblings bickered and buried down a pang of sadness as she thought of her own brother. She had gone back to him, as ill advised as that might have been. She had needed to, in order to ask for the favor.

Forgiveness had come slowly. And perhaps it wasn’t forgiveness so much as it was a need to know just what she was and just why Gabriel had saved her and no one else. Then again, maybe it was just loneliness. For all that Deanna was to her, she didn’t understand what it had meant to break the bond they’d had. Humans were made solitary creatures when it came to their minds at least. Angels, if her research and the occasional memories that came back to her were to be believed, were meant to exist as one among thousands. Castiel was a creature meant to exist in a hive mind and had been deprived of the rest of the hive.

It would be unbearable if it hadn’t been for Deanna. All her life, Cas had never before seen the value in being small. In a life of moments that meant nothing when looked at from afar, and so much more when you truly lived them. In a life that was so short as to be inconsequential, spent saving people that died sooner or later anyway and singing at the top of one’s lungs and fearing the end with all you had but still chasing after it as though you couldn’t quite help it. Deanna was a goddamn sun, but it was the seductive nature of life itself that had made everything else bearable.

But sometimes it was still too quiet, and it was in one of these moments Castiel had called out for Gabriel.

“I thought I wasn’t your brother,” were the first words out of his mouth, when he had come. He was proud and angry, and would never let a slight go. Castiel had known all of that already.

“I said that because I was angry.”

Gabriel snorted and sat down next to Cas. The two of them were silent for a long time.

“Did you really only save me because you thought no one would miss me?” Castiel asked when the silence became unbearable. Gabriel sighed.

“I said that because was angry,” he repeated back to her, tone slightly mocking. He looked down. “No. That’s not why. I did what I did because… you looked sad. And you kept trying to surrender to the humans. It drove Naomi half mad.”

Gabriel smiled to himself.

“So, because I amused you.”

“I don’t know,” said Gabriel. “It just seemed like the right thing to do. I figured if all else failed, there should be one of us left.”

Cas had nodded and took a deep breath, before asking for her favor. Gabriel stared at her once she finished, stunned.

“You can’t ask me to do that,” he had said flatly.

“You owe me,” Castiel had said. “And I thought it was your desire to teach me to be more humble. I’ve learned my lesson, brother. Humanity has humbled me.”

“And if I say no?” Gabriel asked.

“I’ll try to do it myself,” Castiel had answered, and that had sealed the deal. Gabriel, oh so reluctantly had given Castiel the gift she asked for. Unhappiness shown through him to do so, and he looked at Cas with nothing short of regret on his face. He had become the last of his kind.

Cas focused back in on the bickering, only to hear that it had devolved into a circular game of arguing just who was the most stupid. Cas took Deanna’s hand and squeezed it to distract her from her argument with Sam. When that didn’t work, she started pressing light kisses to the back of Deanna’s neck, which was infinitely more effective.

After dropping their bags and getting ready, they arrived at the chapel. Deanna tapped her toe impatiently as they waited for the couples in front of them to take their turns down the aisle.

“They’ll be here,” Cas said to her. Deanna shrugged and checked her watch. Sam, Eileen, and Bobby looked at each other and decided to stay out of it. Charlie and Dorothy had been invited from Oz to the wedding, and had sent back that they would do their best to attend. Cas kept her eyes peeled for the telltale flash of a door opening. Blink or you might miss it, there Charlie stood. She grinned at Deanna, who pulled her in for a hug and a kiss on either cheek. Cas was also dragged into a tight hug, as was Sam.

“Dorothy couldn’t come,” Charlie said apologetically. “But I did bring someone else to-“

The couples in front of them suddenly nodded off and fell asleep. Dressed in a magnificent magenta gown, Rowena approached the two of them with a smile that was a tad too wicked for her official post as a good witch in Oz.

“Marry you off,” Charlie finished lamely. “She insisted.”

“I take full credit for your undying love,” Rowena had said next, her accent thick as the day Deanna had met her. “If it weren’t for me, the both of you would be dead several times over.”

Deanna didn’t look extraordinarily happy that Rowena had decided to take over this position, but she seemed happy enough to let it go if it meant skipping the line.

“One condition,” Deanna said. “You have to wear the Elvis suit.”

And that was how Deanna and Castiel Winchester were married by a witch, with Bobby and Eileen standing with Castiel while Charlie and Sam made up Deanna’s part of the wedding party. It was a whirlwind of ‘I do’s and dancing and drinking and celebrating until the early hours of the morning, at which point Cas and Deanna had stumbled back to their bed and promptly fallen asleep in each other’s arms.

It was a miracle that Cas woke up before Deanna did. Or rather, it wasn’t a miracle so much as it would have been very unlucky if this had been the one morning ever Deanna didn’t aggressively commit herself to sleeping as long as she liked, so help the person who tried to wake her up. It had only been through a series of very careful incentives (such as morning sex), that Cas had managed to make Deanna’s response to Cas waking her up slightly less murderous.

Coffee was the other surefire method, and when Cas woke that was the one she decided to use. The smell alone was enough to get Deanna to lift her head and sit up.

“Hope you didn’t stay up all night watching me,” said Deanna. “I know you want to finish your book.”

Cas snorted and avoided answering Deanna’s implied question. She set the coffee cup in Deanna’s hands and waited the requisite five minutes before saying another word.

“It was nice seeing Charlie and Rowena again,” she said, stalling. Deanna’s face lit up as she remembered the previous night and started laughing.

“Please tell me someone got pictures of Rowena in the Elvis getup,” she muttered to herself. “I need them.”

Cas smiled back at her, but she knew that there was something off about her expression. Deanna paused in her reminiscing and crawled over to Cas’ side of the bed.

“Something wrong?”

“I… I have something to give you,” Cas said. Deanna was put back at ease immediately.

“Me too, actually,” she said. She jumped off the bed and went rummaging through her things, cursing under her breath until she found what she was looking for. Then she hid it behind her back and made Cas engage in a short guessing game before she finally presented a set of car keys. “It’s for the truck I was repairing after we got hit over the head by an archangel. I just… I gotta figure it’s not everybody who can say they fell in love twice, and this is for the second time. And you need your own set of wheels anyway.”

“Thank you,” Cas said, closing the car keys in her fists. Deanna didn’t have any concept of just how useful a gift this would be, since certain other modes of transport had become out of Cas’ reach. Deanna waited for Cas, looking at her expectantly. Cas pulled out the small pouch she had been keeping on her person, and opened it. The moment she did, blue silver light shone out of it.

The object inside was a vial with a stopper in it. A cord wrapped tightly around the vial and was knotted carefully into a necklace. The substance inside glowed, reflecting prettily off of Deanna’s eyes.

“Cas,” Deanna said, tone flat. “What is that?”

“I want to start by saying I didn’t-“ said Cas. “What I mean is, I wanted to. I got to wake up with you in my arms, Deanna. And I wanted to grow old with you, and be with you and feel things the way…”

“Cas,” Deanna said again, but Cas cut her off.

“And this isn’t like before. We aren’t… it’s not tying us together for you to have this. But I can’t leave it lying around, and there’s no one I trust more, and if you ever needed a bit of luck and I wasn’t there-“

“Cas,” Deanna interrupted a third time, voice louder now. “Is this what I think it is?”

Cas looked down. “Yes.”

“What does that mean?” asked Deanna, and she sounded angry and Cas knew she would be at least a little angry but she had still been hoping…

“I’m human,” Cas supplied. She tried for a weak smile. “Surprise.”

“Surprise?” Deanna asked back. She was up on her feet and pacing, and Cas had straightened her back and lifted her chin and prepared herself for the onslaught because she was as old as the universe itself and she would not be intimidated, damn it. “Fuck. Cas, have I ever made it seem like this is something I wanted to happen? That I didn’t-?”

“Deanna, you are the light of my life but you are not the center of the universe,” Cas said back, finding it harder to keep her tone serene now. Emotions were still… overwhelming in a way they hadn’t been before. There was nothing left to soften them, and the massiveness she had been was gone. There was no escape, and it was what Cas had wanted. It was what she still wanted. “This is something I wanted to happen and it’s my life. I get to make the choice.”

That stopped Deanna’s pacing at least. She sat back down at the bed and deliberately met Cas’ eyes in a way that quieted something inside her. Cas waited for Deanna to speak, and didn’t much mind the silence in the mean time. Deanna reached out to touch her hand, and Cas curled her fingers around Deanna’s thumb.

“I… I don’t know how to feel about this. But if it’s what you want-“

“It is.”

“Cas, there isn’t much you could do I wouldn’t support you in,” Deanna said. “As long as this isn’t to make my life easier-“

“Because the Men of Letters are still hunting me?” Cas asked.

“Among other things,” Deanna hedged.

“Wasn’t a contributing factor. I also doubt they will stop hunting me just because I’m a former angel, now.”

“You looked for your past for a long time, Cas,” said Deanna next, still carefully feeling her way around for a weakness in Cas’ reasoning. “You’re sure you’re okay just giving it up like this?”

Cas looked at the vial of grace gripped tightly in Deanna’s hand. She nodded resolutely, then pried it from Deanna's fingers and gently placed the necklace around Deanna's neck.

“Yes,” she said. “I found my past. I guess I figured it was about time I started looking towards the future.”

Deanna's hand touched the vial again, gently, like she thought it would break.

"Keep that safe for me?" Cas asked her. Deanna blinked.

“There’s a lot of shitty things about being human,” Deanna said. Cas slid closer to Deanna and hugged her, soaking in the warmth of her body heat and then pressing up for a quick kiss.

“There are a lot of very nice things, too,” said Cas as evenly as she could manage with Deanna looking like she wanted to devour her. “You taught me that.”

Suffice to say, it was much later in the morning before they emerged from their motel room in order to make the drive back to Bobby’s and clear their stuff out of his damn house, as he put it. They expected to find Bobby, Sam, and Eileen waiting for them impatiently in the lobby, but only found a surly Bobby drinking coffee by the potted plants when they walked down to the first floor.

“Where’s Eileen and Sam?” Cas asked him. He glowered and shrugged, and Deanna said she would go off to get them. When she returned, she was a little red in the face and grinning maniacally and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened.

Eileen and Sam trudged down a little later, looking less than pleased at having been interrupted doing something. The hand Sam had on the small of Eileen's back as they made their way down the stairs was more than ample evidence that the nature of their relationship had changed, hopefully in a direction that suited the both of them. Cas also couldn’t help noticing a hickey on Sam’s neck. Even if she hadn’t noticed, Deanna obnoxiously pointing it out would have drawn her attention to it. Cas raised an eyebrow at Eileen, who winked back at her when Sam wasn’t looking.

“Get it, girl,” Deanna said to Eileen, who signed something very rude in response that made Castiel snicker. Deanna, who was still learning to sign and didn’t know anywhere near as many bad words as she would have liked, stared at Eileen a moment and then signed back: ‘You too, bro.’

“Deanna, please stop,” Sam said out loud, managing to sound both put upon and a little bit smug.

“What? I think it’s nice that you finally got out of your comically long dry spell. I mean, not that I don’t get why the ladies want to stay far away, but it was really just getting sad-“

“Are y’all finished? Because I’d like to get back to my damn house some time today,” Bobby said loudly, cutting off the bickering before it had a chance to begin. “Eileen, Cas, leave these fools while you still can.”

“Okay, okay,” said Deanna, letting the matter rest. For now at least. Cas wasn’t sure she much liked the devious glimmer in her eyes. It softened into something a little more like happiness when she turned to look at Cas and put a hand around her shoulder, tugging her to her side. Cas settled her arm around her wife's waist and tried to place the utterly right feeling of warmth that being next to Deanna provided her. Ultimately, she concluded she could try all her life and never categorize it correctly. Deanna looked at her and squeezed a moment, as if Cas would never be quite close enough. “Let’s go home, then.”

And so that’s what they did.


End file.
